“ultra-impassioned, vividly detailed”- Gramophone "revelatory, stunning" - Fanfare
Elmira Darvarova Ronald Carbone Samuel Magill Linda Hall
Photo by Yui Kitamura
“ultra-impassioned, vividly detailed”- Gramophone "revelatory, stunning" - Fanfare
Photo by Yui Kitamura
A concert violinist since the age of 4, and acclaimed by American Record Guide as "marvelous in the Heifetz tradition", Elmira Darvarova is an award-winning recording artist (Gold Medal at the Global Music Awards in 2 consecutive years - 2017 and 2018), nominated for Latin Grammy®, and a multiple-Grammy® winner (as a former concertmaster of The Metropolitan Opera). Darvarova caused a sensation, becoming the first ever (and the only, as of 2026) female concertmaster in the entire history of the Metropolitan Opera. With the MET Orchestra she toured Europe, Japan and the United States, and was heard on the MET's live weekly international radio broadcasts, television broadcasts, CDs and laser discs on the Sony, Deutsche Grammophon and EMI labels. At the Metropolitan Opera she has worked with the greatest conductors of our time, including the legendary Carlos Kleiber. She studied with Yfrah Neaman at the Guildhall School in London (as a British Council scholar), with Josef Gingold at Indiana University in Bloomington (as one of his assistants), and, privately, with Henryk Szeryng. She is a Fellow of the Guildhall School of Music, where a scholarship bearing Elmira Darvarova’s name is being awarded annually. An award-winning artist (Gold Medal at the 2017 & 2018 Global Music Awards, the Gold Quill Award by Classic FM Radio, and the Boris Christoff Medal), Elmira Darvarova can be heard on numerous CDs (50 to date), recorded for a number of labels (notable album releases include the world-premiere recording of Vernon Duke's violin concerto with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, and a CD with world-premiere recordings of chamber music by René de Castéra, named by Music-Web International a Record of the Year). Elmira Darvarova’s albums have entered the Billboard Charts, most recently at the No. 3 position. Her CDs have won critical acclaim in The Strad, Gramophone, American Record Guide, Fanfare, BBC Music Magazine, Klassic Heute, Ritmo. She has appeared in recitals and as soloist on 5 continents, and has performed concertos with the Moscow State Symphony, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony, and with numerous orchestras on 3 continents. She has performed on the world’s most prestigious stages (including at Carnegie Hall, as soloist with orchestra). She has partnered for chamber music performances with James Levine, János Starker, Gary Karr, Pascal Rogé, Vassily Lobanov, Fernando Otero, Octavio Brunetti, David Amram, and with the superstar of the Sarod - Amjad Ali Khan, with whom she recorded a trilogy of CD albums, based on traditional Indian Ragas (released in the United States, and separately, on the Indian sub-continent, home to 1.9 billion people). Their CD album "Masterpieces for Sarod & Violin" entered the Billboard Classical Charts at No. 3 and was lauded by the world-music magazine Songlines as one of the best "East Meets West" collaborations in a tradition which includes also Yehudi Menuhin and Ravi Shankar. Elmira Darvarova recorded 2 CDs of Baroque music (world-premiere recordings) with the world's most renowned double bassist Gary Karr, and she performed with him Bottesini's Gran Duo Concertante in the United States and Canada. She has recorded 4 CDs of music by Astor Piazzolla, two of them with the late Argentine-born tango pianist and arranger Octavio Brunetti (named by the New York Philharmonic "the inheritor of Piazzolla's mantle"), and she performed in a duo with Octavio Brunetti at festivals in the U.S. and Europe. Elmira Darvarova is a high-octane performer of Piazzolla compositions, as verified by millions of Spotify listeners. For the Naxos label she recorded in 2025 an album of music by David Amram which includes Amram's newest violin composition "Voyages", written for Elmira Darvarova. Also for the Naxos label, she has recorded 3 albums of chamber music by Franco Alfano, comprising Alfano's entire chamber music output (all world-premiere recordings), and the latest of the Alfano "installments" - his previously unrecorded string quartets - earned praise as "one of the best recent Naxos releases". She can also be heard on world-premiere recordings of chamber music by René de Castéra, and by Émile Goué, on 2 albums recorded by the French label Azur Classical. For the German label Solo Musica she has recorded 2 albums: the complete Brahms Sonatas, together with pianist Zhen Chen, and masterpieces by Brahms, Franck, Clara Schumann with the world-renowned Russian pianist Vassily Lobanov (a former piano-duo partner of the legendary Sviatoslav Richter), including the world-premiere recording of Lobanov’s Violin Sonata. For the Urlicht AudioVisual label she has recorded a number of albums, including the acclaimed world-premiere recording of the (written for Heifetz) violin concerto by Vernon Duke (with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony), a highly-praised recording of the Brahms Horn Trio with the former principal horn of The New York Philharmonic Philip Myers, the violin sonata of Amanda Maier (with renowned pianist Bryan Wagorn), a Poulenc disc with the distinguished French pianist Pascal Rogé, 2 CDs with Gary Karr, a Piazzolla album with Octavio Brunetti, an all-Amram album with live recordings, the solo violin album "Violin Declamations from the Twilight of the Workers' Paradise", in addition to several albums with the New York Piano Quartet (of which she is a founding member), and the Kodály Duo, recorded live with János Starker in a sublime partnership which elicited an avalanche of sensational reviews hailing it as "the epitome of two powerful musicians as absolute equals". For the Affetto label she has recorded numerous albums, including “Music from Five Centuries", "Masterpieces by Beethoven, Franck, Clara Schumann" (with Japanese-Canadian pianist Shoko Inoue), "David Amram - So in America“, with the participation of David Amram and film-star Estelle Parsons (Oscar-winner, "Bonnie and Clyde"), "Astor Piazzolla - Genius of Tango" (one of the most-requested on Spotify), “Music by Women”, "American Music for Violin & Horn", two Ysaÿe albums ("Homage to Eugéne Ysaÿe" and "The Genius of Ysaÿe"), "Music by Phillip Ramey" (which was No. 1 best-seller in Chamber Music on Amazon, and also entered the Billboard Charts), "Horn Trios by Brahms, Kahn, Koechlin and Dubois", plus three volumes of the anthology "Horn Trios from Mozart to Piazzolla and beyond" (critically-acclaimed double-CD albums which have been broadcast in programs of BBC Radio London and ABC Radio in Australia), an album of Hungarian composers ("From Liszt to Ligeti"), the 2026 violin & horn duo-album "Kaleidoscope - Music from a Thousand Years", and a disc with chamber works by José Serebrier, whose composition "Nostalgia" was transcribed and interpreted for solo violin by Elmira Darvarova at the composer's request. She also recorded, for the Siderata label, the album “Can You Hear the Flowers” with Argentine-born Grammy®-winning pianist & composer Fernando Otero, with whom she has performed on 2 continents, and who has dedicated to her 6 compositions for solo violin. Many other composers have dedicated works to Elmira Darvarova, most notably David Amram, José Serebrier, Wang Jie, Phillip Ramey, Dmitri Smirnov, Vassily Lobanov, Francine Trester, Paul Chihara, Yui Kitamura, Sean Hickey, Zhen Chen, Konstantin Soukhovetski, Stephen Brown, and others. Elmira Darvarova registered the world-premiere recordings of Elena Firsova's works "Fantasia for solo violin" and "Memoria", and she also presented the world-premiere performance of Firsova's "Memoria" in 2020 in New York. Elmira Darvarova has participated in high-profile world-premiere performances of chamber music by Nikolai Kapustin and David Baker, and in the American premiere of György Ligeti's newly-discovered Duo for Violin & Piano (with pianist Thomas Weaver). Elmira Darvarova was among the first violinists to perform Amanda Maier's Violin Sonata at Stockholm's Konserthuset in Amanda Maier's country of birth. Elmira Darvarova has recorded live for Radio Innsbruck in Austria, as well as for Radio Suisse Romande in Switzerland. Her recital at Béla Bartók's memorial house in Budapest was broadcast live throughout Europe. A documentary film about her life and career was shown on European television. She performs in a duo with Grammy®-winner, pianist & composer Fernando Otero, and she is a founding member of the New York Piano Quartet, the Delphinium Trio, the Quinteto del Fuego and the Amram Ensemble. She is Jury President of several international chamber music competitions in Europe, and she is Artistic Director of the New York Chamber Music Festival. Praised by Gramophone Magazine for her "ultra-impassioned performances", and in The Strad for her “intoxicating tonal beauty and beguilingly sensuous phrasing" and "silky-smooth voluptuous tone”, she was featured in Gramophone with an interview about her world-premiere recording of Vernon Duke's violin concerto with the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra. She has also been featured with numerous interviews in Fanfare, and has been interviewed live at radio stations in the United States, Canada, South America, Europe, India and Japan. Not specializing in any particular music genre, Elmira Darvarova instead chooses to be a top interpreter in a vast variety of styles and epochs, not only strictly-classical, but also in the realm of jazz, blues, tango, folk music. Her Mozart interpretation was lauded by Igor Oistrakh in the most eminent Russian musical publication, while the Chicago Tribune reviewed her Mozart performance in a write-up under the title "A Night to Remember". The New York Times extolled her affinity for Debussy and Ravel. Her rendition of the Brahms Horn Trio (recorded together with the former Principal Horn of the New York Philharmonic Philip Myers, and pianist & MET Opera conductor Bryan Wagorn) has been hailed as belonging in the same league as the iconic 1960s Myron Bloom recording. Ritmo Magazine defined Darvarova's Brahms Sonatas album (with pianist Zhen Chen) as an “exceptionally-expressive flight to the heights of classic interpretations of music which was born to be understood this way”. Her recording of Ysaÿe's "Ballade" was praised as breathtaking and among the best. Reviews of the Franco Alfano recordings raved that "the performances are wondrously fervent, the sound is at your throat, heated and upon you with tiger-like ferocity". Elmira Darvarova's interpretation of the Kodály Duo with legendary cellist János Starker has been unanimously recognized in the press as "spellbinding", "electrifying", "the epitome of two powerful musicians as absolute equals", "edge-of-the-seat performance", "thrilling", "astonishing", "the finest performance of the Kodály Duo" and many other accolades. A reviewer also stated: "I have heard the Kodály Duo played with comparable virtuosity by Heifetz and Piatigorsky, but the exposed, almost wounded, rendition by Darvarova and Starker practically impales the listener for the duration of the performance".
Violist Ronald Carbone has had a diverse musical life encompassing chamber music, orchestral and solo performances, as well as recording. He has been Principal Violist of the American Ballet Theatre Orchestra, an Associate Member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and a member of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He is the founder and music director of the Canaan Chamber Music Festival. He performs with the New York Piano Quartet and the Omni Piano Quartet, and is a frequent guest violist with the renowned concert series Spectrum Concerts in Berlin, Germany. Ronald Carbone has been a member of the Composer’s String Quartet, the Portsmouth Chamber Ensemble, the Lexington Trio and the Griffes String Quartet. Mr. Carbone has been on the faculties of Vassar College and Smith College. His recordings have been released on many record labels including Naxos, CRI, Albany, Reference-Records, Affetto, Azur Classical and Urlicht Audiovisual. The recipient of the Martha Baird Rockefeller Grant for Music Award, he has been awarded two Artists International Awards. He was a member of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, has performed extensively with The New York Philharmonic and was Assistant Principal Violist of the Barcelona City Orchestra. A student of Boston Symphony’s concertmaster Richard Burgin and the eminent violin soloist Ruth Posselt, Mr. Carbone received his master’s degree from Yale School of Music. Involved in a multitude of performing and recording projects, Ronald Carbone has participated in numerous important premiere performances, including the New York premiere of Eugène Ysaÿe’s String Trio No. 1, Op. 33, a.k.a. “Le Chimay”, the American premiere of the “Rhapsodie” by Joseph Marx, and the New York premiere of Charles-Marie Widor’s Piano Quartet Op. 66 (a performance hailed in the press as “revelatory, stunning”). Ronald Carbone has recorded a number of works for solo viola by contemporary composers, including the world-premiere recordings of viola pieces by David Amram, José Serebrier, Garth Knox. Ronald Carbone was the first violist to record Eugene Ysaÿe's recently-discovered "Introduction for Solo Viola", and he also participated, together with Elmira Darvarova and Samuel Magill, in the world-premiere recordings of Ysaÿe's String Trios Op. 33 and 34, in their recently-discovered finalized versions.
Cellist Samuel Magill has been called "a world-class artist” in the press, and his first Naxos CD, of Vernon Duke’s 1945 Cello Concerto, was lauded as “flat-out magnificent” by the American Record Guide. After a concert, conductor Lorin Maazel hailed Magill’s playing as “well-nigh perfect.” The Strad Magazine raved about Magill’s “sumptuous tone” in his 2014 recital at New York’s Bargemusic series, in which he and Beth Levin played the rarely heard Czerny arrangement of Beethoven’s "Kreutzer" Violin Sonata. This led to their 2016 Navona CD which includes the Kreutzer, the Solo Cello Sonata by Artur Schnabel, and the Ballade by Emanuel Moór. Writing in Classics Today, Jed Distler said “…Magill’s superb technique, range of color, and intelligent pacing make a compelling case (for the Schnabel)”. Among Magill’s 20 CDs, his and his colleagues' (Elmira Darvarova, Craig and Mary Ann Mumm, and Scott Dunn) three volume survey of the complete chamber music of Franco Alfano, for Naxos, is a stand-out. Mr Magill has appeared as soloist throughout Japan and the U.S., including performances of both the Schumann Concerto and the Brahms Double Concerto in Tokyo’s famed Suntory Hall, and the Brahms and the Haydn D Major Concerto in Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall. During nine tours of Japan, Magill performed, besides the above works, the concerti of Dohnanyi, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and the Triple Concerto of Beethoven. He has partnered with the pianists Oxana Yablonskaya, Pascal Rogé, and the late Grant Johannesen, and presented annual recitals from 1994 until 2019 at Lincoln Center’s New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. He is a co-founder, with flutist Lucian Rinando and harpist Grace Ludtke, of the flute, cello, and harp trio Sono Auros. They made their New York debut at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall to critical acclaim, with Strings Magazine declaring them “masters of their instruments.” Magill is also a founding member of the New York Piano Quartet (Elmira Darvarova, violin; Ronald Carbone, viola; and Linda Hall, piano). Festivals Mr. Magill has participated in include the Tanglewood, Aspen, Tahoe, Castleton, and the Festival Albert Roussel in France and Belgium, for which he and pianist Diane Andersen played recitals in Bruges and Paris. A pupil of the late Zara Nelsova, Mr. Magill also studied with Laurence Lesser at the Peabody Institute and with Shirley Trepel at Rice University. He is the former Associate Principal Cello with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, former member of the Houston Symphony, and a former member of the Pittsburgh Symphony. In his 43 years as a member of these orchestras, Magill worked with conductors Muti, Levine, Rattle, Bernstein, Ozawa, Maazel, Thielemann, Rozhdestvensky, Leinsdorf, Rudolf, Barenboim, Luisi, and Santi, among many others. Mr. Magill is originally from Chapel Hill, NC and attended the University of North Carolina School of the Arts for high school. There he was a student of the late Irving Klein, who was a pupil of Emanuel Feuermann, as were Ms. Trepel and Ms. Nelsova.
A long-time Assistant Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Linda Hall has prepared some of the most challenging operatic masterpieces (including works of Schoenberg, Berg, Strauss, Britten and world-premieres of operas by Corigliano, Harbison, Bolcom, and Picker). She also performs as part of the MET Orchestra, and has appeared regularly with the MET Chamber Ensemble at Carnegie Hall. In addition to her work with the MET, she collaborates with many singers and instrumentalists in concerts throughout the United States, in Europe, the Middle East and the Far East. At age 5 she performed Chopin on the radio, and at 13 was piano soloist with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Having received degrees from Oberlin, Juilliard and the Salzburg Mozarteum, Linda Hall has taught in Israel, Mexico, Japan and China. She has also been performing and recording with the New York Piano Quartet. Her recordings include discs on the Neuma label with flutist Patricia Spencer, an album with MET Orchestra principal cellist Jascha Silberstein for the Heritage label, a CD on the Capriccio label, recordings for the French label Azur Classical, and albums with the New York Piano Quartet for Urlicht AudioVisual.
"Ultra-impassioned, vividly detailed" -Gramophone
"Revelatory, stunning" -Fanfare
Comprised of Metropolitan Opera musicians (violinist Elmira Darvarova, violist Ronald Carbone, cellist Samuel Magill and pianist Linda Hall), The NEW YORK PIANO QUARTET is the core ensemble of the New York Chamber Music Festival, appearing at prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall. Their performances have been called “revelatory” and “stunning” by Fanfare Magazine, while their recordings were praised as “ultra-impassioned, vividly detailed” by Gramophone Magazine. Their recording of Alfred Schnittke's "Piano Quartet after Mahler" was hailed as the definitive version, and they have championed works by Gustav Mahler, Erich Korngold, Joseph Marx, Charles-Marie Widor, Amanda Maier, David Amram, Gernot Wolfgang, Wang Jie and José Serebrier (among many others), presenting a multitude of world premieres, American premieres and New York premieres. A CD album with world-premiere recordings of chamber works by René de Castéra (released by the French label Azur Classical), on which three of the New York Piano Quartet members appear, was selected by Music-Web International as Recording of the Month, and among the Records of the Year. The string players of the group - Elmira Darvarova, Ronald Carbone and Samuel Magill - participated in an album of José Serebrier's chamber music for which they recorded a number of never-before released works, and they also registered, for a different album, the world-premiere recordings of Eugene Ysaÿe's String Trios Op. 33 and 34, in their recently-discovered finalized versions.
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