Dutch mezzo-soprano Christianne Stotijn and the world’s most in-demand collaborative pianist, Julius Drake, will perform together at the Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall on Friday, December 2, 2011, at 8 p.m. Both performers are returning artists on the Performing Arts Series. Their concert program will include songs by Schumann, Mahler, and Eisler.

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Winners of the 2010 BBC Music Magazine Vocal Award for their recording of Tchaikovsky Romances, the duo is sought-after in the world’s most prestigious venues. Crackerjack music guide noted, “From her first phrases it was obvious that Christianne Stotijn is an artistic singer with a rich voice which she used to express fully the many emotions in her recital. Whether placing notes on the mask of her face or deep in her chest register she drew us completely into her world…This exciting drama brought pianist Julius Drake to the fore in the significant accompaniment. Throughout the evening his playing was as partner and sure support…”

About Christianne Stotijn

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Mezzo soprano Christianne Stotijn was born in Delft, the Netherlands. Throughout her career, she has won several important prizes including the prestigious 2005/06 ECHO Rising Stars, 2005 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, and the Dutch Music Prize in 2008. Stotijn was also a BBC New Generation Artist in 2007. An impassioned performer of lieder, she has performed recitals in many of the world’s premier concert halls with her accompanists Joseph Breinl and Julius Drake, with whom she has had a longstanding and fruitful collaboration. Her recital career has already seen her appear several times at Wigmore Hall, Carnegie Hall, Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Palais des Beaux Arts Brussels, the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, and Spivey Hall in Atlanta, among others. She made her debut at the Philharmonie Berlin performing Schoenberg’s “Das Buch der Hängenden Gärten” with pianist Mitsuko Uchida.

The eminent conductor Bernard Haitink has been an influential figure in Ms. Stotijn’s career. Following her successful performances in Mahler’s Rückert Lieder with the Orchestre National de France and the Concertgebouw Orchestra, Haitink invited her for the Mahler 2 with the BBC Proms, Beethoven 9 at the Lucerne Festival, Rückert Lieder with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, St. Matthew Passion with the Boston Symphony, as well as Das Lied von der Erde with the London Symphony Orchestra.

On the concert and operatic platform, Stotijn has appeared with the Berlin Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Paris, Rotterdam Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra in Washington DC, London Philharmonic Orchestra, Gabrieli Consort, Chicago Symphony, Boston Symphony, Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Dallas Symphony, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Danish National Symphony, the Operas of Paris and the Netherlands, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and the Teatro Arriaga, Bilbao. BBC Music Magazine describes her as “that artist in a thousand whose personality shines through everything she does.”

About Julius Drake

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Pianist Julius Drake lives in London and specializes in the field of chamber music, working with many of the world’s leading artists, both in recital and in recordings. He has appeared at all the major music centers; recent concerts have taken him to the Aldeburgh, Edinburgh, Munich, Salzburg, Schubertiade, and Tanglewood Music Festivals; to Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York; Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Philarmonie in Cologne; the Châtelet and Musée de Louvre in Paris; the Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna; and Wigmore Hall and the BBC Proms in London.

Director of the Perth International Chamber Music Festival in Australia from 2000–2003, Drake was also musical director of Deborah Warner’s staging of Janáček’s Diary of One Who Vanished, touring to Munich, London, Dublin, Amsterdam, and New York. He is appointed artistic director of Leeds Lieder in 2009 and the Machynlleth Festival in Wales from 2009–2011.

Julius Drake’s passionate interest in song has led to invitations to devise song series for the Wigmore Hall, London, the BBC and the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam. A series of song recitals, Julius Drake and Friends, in the historic Middle Temple Hall in London, has featured recitals with many outstanding vocal artists including Thomas Allen, Olaf Bär, Ian Bostridge, Angelika Kirchschlager, Sergei Leiferkus, Felicity Lott, Katarina Karneus, Simon Keenlyside, Christopher Maltman, Mark Padmore, Christoph Pregardien, Amanda Roocroft, and Willard White.

In 2010 Julius Drake was appointed Professor at Graz University for Music and the Performing Arts in Austria and he regularly gives master classes, recently in Amsterdam, Brussels, Oxford, Paris,Vienna and at the Schubert Institut, Baden bei Wien.

Live recordings from recitals at Wigmore Hall London for the “Wigmore Live” label have included concerts with Lorraine Hunt Liebersen, Joyce Didonato, Christopher Maltman, Gerald Finley, and Matthew Polenzani. He has made an award-winning series of recordings with Ian Bostridge for EMI, including discs of Schumann, Schubert, Henze, Britten, The English Songbook, and La Bonne Chanson. His recent series of recordings with Gerald Finley for Hyperion— Ives, Barber, Schumann, Ravel, and Britten— has been widely acclaimed and Barber Songs and then Schuman Heine Lieder have won both the 2008 and 2009 Gramophone Awards.

The Christianne Stotijn/Julius Drake concert will take place on Friday, December 2, 2011, at 8 p.m., at Mahaney Center for the Arts, in the Concert Hall. A special reception will follow the concert to celebrate series director Paul Nelson’s forty-eight years of teaching Political Science at Middlebury. Tickets are $25 for the general public; $20 for Middlebury College faculty, staff, alumni, emeriti, and other ID card holders; and $6 for Middlebury College students Buy tickets at ext. 6433 or http://boxoffice.middlebury.edu/index.php. For more information, go to http://go.middlebury.edu/arts.

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