A Vibrant Legacy: Chamber Music of a Lost Generation

Yumi Hwang-Williams, violin

Sheila Reinhold, violin, viola

Meta Weiss, cello

Feiner Family Chapel, Temple Emanuel Denver

51 Grape Street, Denver CO 80220

Admission free, registration required.  Registration link

In observance of Colorado Holocaust Remembrance Week, please join violinist Yumi Hwang-Williams, violinist/violist Sheila Reinhold, and cellist Meta Weiss for a concert in Temple Emanuel Denver’s intimate Feiner Chapel, featuring music by composers who were murdered or who suffered persecution, exile, and tragic loss during the Holocaust. We are fortunate to be able to play these wonderful works, and their beauty and creativity still speak to us today.

This year's short and varied program will include the passionate and virtuosic 1935 sonata for two violins by Miklós Rózsa (later the composer of many scores for films such as Spellbound and Ben-Hur), the lyrical and and folkloric String Trio Op.1 written in 1926 by Hungarian-Dutch composer Géza Frid, and the powerful Passacaglia and Fugue for string trio by Hans Krása, written in the Terezin internment camp before he was transported to his death in 1944.

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Yumi Hwang-Williams (violin) has served as Concertmaster of the Colorado Symphony since 2000. She made her debut at the age of fifteen as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, six years after emigrating from South Korea, and has appeared as soloist with major orchestras both in the U.S. and abroad, including the Cincinnati Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony, Sinfonieorchester Basel (Switzerland), and the Bruckner Orchester Linz (Austria), in addition to frequent performances as soloist with the Colorado Symphony. As a chamber musician, she has performed with Gary Graffman, Ida Kavafian, Jeffrey Kahane, Christopher O'Riley, Jon Kimura Parker, and Andrew Litton, and she is especially committed to the work of current-day composers, Strings magazine calling her “a modern Prometheus” who has “emerged as a fiery champion of contemporary classical music”. She is Adjunct Violin Professor at the University of Denver Lamont School of Music and is actively involved in advancing the arts in the community.

Sheila Reinhold (violin/viola), curator of this concert, first performed as soloist with orchestra at age nine. At fifteen, she joined Jascha Heifetz’s master class, where she studied for five years. Her career has included chamber music with Heifetz and cellist Gregor Piatigorsky, appearances as soloist with major orchestras, and freelance work from Broadway to movie scores. She has had a lifelong dedication to teaching, serving as adjudicator, guest teacher and chamber music coach at, among others, the Juilliard School, Mannes College, Manhattan School of Music, Eastman School of Music and Columbia University, in addition to her private teaching. She is the founder and Music Director of Intimate Voices, a chamber music series with community outreach in New York City, now in its 16th season. In 2023 she offered an evening course through the University of Denver Enrichment Program on the topic of persecuted composers and the Holocaust,  Banned Music Reborn: The Rediscovery of Two Generations of European Composers. 

American cellist Meta Weiss made her international debut at the age of seven in Utrecht, Holland, and has established herself as one of the leading artists of her generation, performing in venues worldwide including Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center, Boston's Symphony Hall, Royal Albert Hall, The Sydney Opera House, Melbourne Recital Centre, and Teatro Britanico (Peru). As a member of the cello rock group Break of Reality, she was selected by the US Department of State as a “musical ambassador,” touring across America, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and Brazil. Weiss has served as guest principal cello of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra and guest assistant principal cello of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and her album Entendre (Sono Luminus label) was a winner of the Violoncello Foundation Listener’s Choice Award. She is Chamber Music Coordinator and Teaching Associate Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, Artistic Director of the Boulder Cello Festival, and a founding member of the Colorado Cello Quartet.