Lenox — This year’s Birch Festival comprises three events: “Meet The Birch Festival” (music and wine tasting) on Friday, October 18; “Don’t Tap on the Glass” (open rehearsal) on Saturday, October 19; and “Bold Beginnings,” a program of Beethoven, Cassadò, Rachmaninov, and Brahms, also on Saturday, October 19.
The musicians on the 19th are cellist Amit Peled, pianist Roman Rabinovich, and violinist Yevgeny Kutik, founder of the Birch Festival, and their program for Saturday is as follows:
- L.V. Beethoven — Piano Trio Op. 1 No. 3
- Gaspar Cassadò — “Requiebros” in D Major in D Major
- Sergey Rachmaninov — Prelude Op. 23 No. 5
- Johannes Brahms — Piano Trio No. 1 in B Major, Op. 8
Israeli-American cellist, conductor, and pedagogue Amit Peled is a professor at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, where he has taught since 2003. He has released over a dozen recordings on the Naxos, Centaur, Delos, and CTM Classics labels. During the COVID-19 lockdown, Peled established the Amit Peled Online Cello Academy to reach cellists all over the world with private lessons and in-depth courses on his “First Hour” technique method.
Roman Rabinovich won the 12th Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in 2008. He has subsequently performed throughout Europe and the U.S. in such venues as Leipzig’s Gewandhaus; London’s Wigmore Hall; Carnegie Hall; Cité de la Musique in Paris; and Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center. Highlights of Rabinovich’s 2024–2025 season include returns to Wigmore Hall, the Lammermuir Festival in Scotland, and the Liszt Academy Chamber Music Festival in Budapest.
In 1990, Yevgeny Kutik, a Belarusian-Jewish refugee, found a new home in Pittsfield with the assistance of the Jewish Federation. He was five years old at the time and just beginning to learn the violin. Thirty-five years later, Kutik is a renowned concert violinist and recording artist who has asked himself, “What can I do to help benefit the community that has been there for me for so many years?”
Kutik and his wife Rachel Barker have answered this question by founding the Birch Festival, a non-profit organization whose mission is to bring world-class musicians to the Berkshires for artist residencies in local schools and to partner with local business and cultural organizations to host two music festivals each year. Barker, who writes about science and engineering for Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, is the organization’s executive director. Her MEd is from Boston College, where she graduated with a focus on social justice and teaching English language learners. Her undergraduate degree in anthropology is from Boston University, and she has studied religion at Harvard.
A native of Minsk, Belarus, Yevgeny Kutik began violin studies with his mother, Alla Zernitskaya. He made his major orchestral debut in 2003 with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops as the First Prize recipient of the Boston Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition. In 2006, he received the Salon de Virtuosi Grant, as well as the Tanglewood Music Center Jules Reiner Violin Prize. His discography includes “The Death of Juliet and Other Tales” (2021), “Meditations on Family” (2019), “Words Fail” (2016), “Music from the Suitcase” (2014), and “Sounds of Defiance” (2012), all on the Marquis Classics label. In August 2022 at Tanglewood, Kutik gave the world premiere of “Cântico,” a work for solo violin by Portuguese composer Andreia Pinto Correia that the Boston Symphony Orchestra co-commissioned for him. (See Kutik perform the piece on his YouTube channel.)
Hear Birch Festival artists Amit Peled, Roman Rabinovich, and Yevgeny Kutik perform a program of Beethoven, Cassadò, Rachmaninov, and Brahms on Saturday, October 19, 4 p.m., at Church on the Hill, 169 Main Street, Lenox, MA 01240. More information and tickets are available here.
