Concert Program
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E-flat major, K. 493
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | 25’
Allegro
Larghetto
Allegretto
Thousandth Orange
Caroline Shaw | 11’
Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57
Dmitri Shostakovich | 34’
Prelude: Lento
Fugue: Adagio
Scherzo: Allegretto
Intermezzo: Lento
Finale: Allegretto
Musicians
Nicola Melville, piano
Rui Du, violin
Rolf Haas, violin
David Auerbach, viola
Richard Belcher, cello
Meet the Musicians
New Zealand cellist Richard Belcher joined the SPCO in 2019 after a twenty-year career as founding cellist of the Grammy-nominated Enso String Quartet. With the quartet he earned highly critical accolades from recording and concertizing in many of the world’s major concert halls such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and Kennedy Center in the United States, as well as abroad in Europe, South America, Australia and New Zealand.
Richard is the Artistic Director of Music on the Hill in Mankato, Minnesota, and since 2008 has been Principal Cellist of River Oaks Chamber Orchestra in Houston, Texas. He has taught and performed at many festivals including St. Bart’s, Festival d’Aix en Provence, Prussia Cove, Madeline Island, Campos do Jordao International Winter Festival, SummerFest La Jolla, and the San Miguel de Allende International Chamber Music Festival. In demand as a teacher and chamber music coach, Richard has previously served as Adjunct Faculty at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music and has given numerous masterclasses around the world.
Richard moved to the United States in 1998 to study with Aldo Parisot at Yale University, and it was while there that he founded the Enso String Quartet. Richard’s other principal teachers include Norman Fischer, Marc Johnson, and Alexander Ivashkin. He plays an N.F. Vuillaume cello made in 1856, and is married to Cecilia Belcher, Assistant Principal 2nd Violin of the Minnesota Orchestra.
New Zealand-born pianist Nicola Melville has been described as “having an original and intelligent musical mind” (Waikato Times), “a marvelous pianist who plays with splashy color but also exquisite tone and nuance” (American Record Guide), and “the sort of advocate any composer would love” (Dominion Post, NZ). She has performed and taught extensively throughout the US, Europe, South America, and New Zealand, and her live performances and recordings have been broadcast on Canadian, US, New Zealand, South African, and Chinese radio. Nicola has collaborated recently with members of the Kronos Quartet and the JACK quartet, and with members of the Detroit, Toledo, Columbus, Minnesota, and Saint Paul Chamber orchestras. Upcoming performances include appearances in the US, Chile, and New Zealand, and concerts with the New Zealand String Quartet. Nicola has been involved in numerous projects with dancers, filmmakers, computer scientists, and visual artists, including performances at the Kennedy Center and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and has collaborated with prolific NZ/UK composer Christopher Norton in recording several CDs of works that are included in world-wide distribution by Boosey and Hawkes publishing.
Nicola attended the Victoria University School of Music, Wellington, where she studied with Judith Clark, and then earned Masters and Doctorate degrees from the Eastman School of Music, studying with Rebecca Penneys. While at Eastman, Nicola was awarded the Lizzie T. Mason prize for Outstanding Graduate Pianist, and the prestigious Performer’s Certificate. Nicola won the National Concerto Competition and the Auckland Star Concerto Competition in New Zealand, and she has been a prizewinner in several competitions in the U.S., including being the winner of the SAI Concerto Competition at the Chautauqua Music Festival. She has won grants from such national organizations as Meet the Composer, Creative New Zealand, the Argosy Fund for Contemporary Music, and the Jerome Composers Commissioning Program for the commissioning, performing, and recording of new music.
Nicola is co-chair of the piano program at the Chautauqua summer festival, gathering world-clas students and faculty to western New York every summer; she also performs 40 concerts a year as pianist of the ensemble, Zeitgeist. Nicola’s recordings for the innova and Equilibrium labels include the Complete Piano Rags of William Albright, and thirteen newly commissioned works by award-winning composers such as Augusta Read Thomas and Gabriela Lena Frank. Nicola is currently Professor of Music at Carleton College, Minnesota.
Violinist Rui Du joined the Minnesota Orchestra as assistant concertmaster in 2015, he previously served in same role with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and concertmaster of the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. Du has won a number of competitions, one of his most preeminent success was at the Canetti International Violin Competition in Paris where he won Grand Prix and seized numerous concert engagements. He has been featured as a soloist with Minnesota Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, South Dakoda Symphony, Aspen Music Festival Baroque Ensemble, FuJian Symphony, Hebei Symphony, Qingdao Symphony and collaborated with renowned conductors such as Osmo Vänskä, Nicholas McGegan, Zhang Guo-Yong, Delta David Gier, Junping Qian, among others. He appears regularly as a soloist and chamber musician at Aspen Music Festival, Tanglewood Music Festival, and as an avid chamber musician, Du and his wife pianist Hanna Hyunjung Kim, co-founded a mixed chamber ensemble called Ensemble Muzén together with renown musicians in the Twin Cities. Since 2015, Du also has been frequent guest concertmaster of Qingdao Symphony, Guiyang Symphony Orchestra. He has frequently given master classes and lectures in Young Siew Toh Conservatory of Music of National University of Singapore and Peabody Institute of John Hopkins University. Rui Du plays on a Lorenzo Storioni from ca.1784 Cremona on kind loan from the Rin Collection.
‘Violinist Rolf Haas is fearless’ (Minneapolis Star Tribune). As a musician who is not ashamed to take risks, Rolf combines virtuosity and an expansive sound palette playing concerts all over the world as soloist, recitalist and chamber musician. His primary studies took place with Professor Yair Kless in Graz, Austria (Soloist Diploma) and with Professor Sally O’Reilly at the University of Minnesota (Bachelor’s Degree in Violin Performance). In 2021, he completed a Performance Leadership Degree at Cornell. He has worked with and performed works by World Renowned Composer Kaija Saariaho in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Rolf’s mother is an artist, and Rolf has frequently been involved in performances with visual artists, helping to show a unity between the disciplines. Mr. Haas plays on his grandfather’s Gagliano, and the world premier of the Violin Concerto by Alban Berg was played by his grandfather’s teacher Louis Krasner on this instrument. He currently plays in the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and has performed as Second Violin Leader of Kammerakademie Potsdam (Germany) as well as Concertmaster of the Mozaic Festival Orchestra. Rolf also occasionally plays with the Grazer Kammerorchester (Austria), where he is Assistant Concertmaster and Münchner Kammerorchester (Germany). He has been recently been featured on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today”.
Rolf is also a respected hip-hop artist (emcee/producer). With his former group, Nocturnal Unit, he has released 3 full length albums, and an E.P. Nocturnal Unit has been featured on the Current 89.3, undergroundhiphop.com, and undergroundhiphopradio.com and has been in regular rotation on 98.2 The Beat (Los Angeles). Their final songs and records combined compositional techniques of conversational chamber music with the sonic palette of hip-hop, and hardcore punk. Currently, he is building the framework for 13 Odd House, a name and place through which he can release new creative projects such as writings, music, and a new movie/recital series: of which the first film, ‘House of Mysterious Secrets’, was screened in Theaters and on Television throughout winter 21-22.
Violist David Auerbach will begin his third consecutive one-year position with the Minnesota Orchestra this fall. Since moving to the Twin Cities in the fall of 2007, David has cultivated a fulfilling and varied performing and teaching career. He is the principal violist of the Minnesota Opera Orchestra, and has performed regularly with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, as well as many other local orchestral and chamber ensembles. He also frequently performs elsewhere in the country, including with the chamber orchestra A Far Cry, which is based in Boston. A dedicated chamber musician, David has participated in the music festivals of Ravinia, Kneisel Hall, and Norfolk, and he has performed with chamber groups several times in Carnegie’s Weill and Zankel Recital Halls. David joined the faculty of the University of St. Thomas in 2012, and also maintains a private teaching studio.
David earned a DMA from Stony Brook University in 2007, where he was a scholarship student of Katherine Murdock. Additionally, he received a Masters Degree from the Juilliard School under the tutelage of Samuel Rhodes, and a Bachelor of Science Degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with majors in Music Performance (studying with Sally Chisholm) and Molecular Biology.
