FSMA 2026
Guest Master Clinicians
Zsolt Bognár, piano
Pianist, host, and author Zsolt Bognár holds a meteoric, multi-dimensional career that re-defines what it means to be a musician in the 21st century.
Known to many around the globe in musical and cultural circles, Mr. Bognár is host of the award-winning film series Living the Creative Life. As concert pianist, he frequently gives inspiring performances in North America, Europe, and Asia.
Zsolt Bognár’s acclaimed work for Living the Creative Life has been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. From its beginnings as Living the Classical Life, the series seeks the inner work of the world’s leading creatives, with a strong musical focus. Guests have included Vladimir Ashkenazy, Joyce DiDonato, Yuja Wang, Yefim Bronfman, Daniil Trifonov, Joshua Bell, John Corigliano, Susan Graham, and many more. With over 200 episodes, the show continues to grow and feature more outstanding artists discussing the rarely heard stories of how they became who they are today.
A protégé of Deutsche Grammophon recording artist and distinguished teacher Sergei Babayan, Mr. Bognár has toured as recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He has appeared at New York’s Lincoln Center and 92nd Street Y, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. With notable performances in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Chicago, and Los Angeles, he has appeared on many NPR programs including full-length recital programs, interviews, poetry readings, and discussions of historical recordings and performers.
Zsolt Bognár’s debut album Franz & Franz was recorded in Berlin with Grammy-winning producer Philipp Nedel. It has been heralded by international press for the benchmark status in solo works by Schubert and Liszt.
Especially praised for his concert work in Germanic, Russian, and Romantic repertoire, he often chooses to highlight lesser-known masterpieces by the great composers with themed programs exploring links between composers and aesthetic trends, often giving his own pre-concert lectures.
Mr. Bognár’s speaking engagements exploring music and the lives of the composers seek to reach new audiences. His two-time TEDMED presentations in San Francisco were broadcast live in 164 countries to 172,000 people.
Zsolt Bognár won the prestigious Artist Presentation Society Auditions (2009) and was later featured in two appearances at the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts in Chicago. In 2012, he made his Berlin sold-out debut at Konzerthaus am Gendarmenmarkt for the Young Euro Classic festival. The recipient of an International Festival Society Grant, his work as performer and author have been featured in International Piano, The Examiner, The Washington Post, and on his blog where he wrote a multi-part, behind-the-scenes portrait of Martha Argerich and Sergei Babayan.
​
Karen Gomyo, “a first-rate artist of real musical command, vitality, brilliance and intensity” (The Chicago Tribune), possesses a rare ability to captivate and connect intimately with audiences through her deeply emotional and heartfelt performances. With flawless command of the instrument and an elegance of expression, she is one of today’s leading violinists.
Following a highly successful 2024/25 season which included debuts with the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra, Orchestra RAI Torino, and the Helsinki, Oslo, and Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestras, as well as returns to the Baltimore, Indianapolis, Montreal, Toronto, Sydney, and Melbourne Symphony Orchestras, Karen’s 2025/26 season will bring more highly anticipated appearances. She returns to the New York Philharmonic, the New World Symphony, the National Symphony Orchestra Taiwan, Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, Residentie Orkest in The Hague, and the Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. She will also make debuts with the SWR Symphonieorchester Stuttgart, Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich, Malaysian Philharmonic, and the Hyogo Performing Arts Centre Orchestra.
Other recent highlights include debuts with the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig under Semyon Bychkov, the Tokyo Metropolitan Orchestra with Jakub Hrůša, the Pittsburgh Symphony, Orquesta Nacional de España, and the Czech Philharmonic, as well as returns to the Dallas Symphony, Chicago Symphony, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Bamberg Symphony, and WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln.
As a passionate chamber musician, Karen has performed with artists such as Olli Mustonen, Leif Ove Andsnes, Enrico Pace, James Ehnes, Noah Bendix-Balgley, Daishin Kashimoto, Emmanuel Pahud, Julian Steckel, the late Heinrich Schiff, mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, and guitarist Ismo Eskelinen, with whom she recorded the duo album Carnival on BIS Records.
She is also a champion of the nuevo tango music of Astor Piazzolla, having collaborated with Piazzolla’s longtime pianist and tango legend Pablo Ziegler, as well as with bandoneon players Héctor del Curto, JP Jofre, and Marcelo Nisinman. In 2021, Karen released A Piazzolla Trilogy (BIS Records), recorded with the Strings of Orchestre National des Pays de la Loire and guitarist Stephanie Jones.
Each season, Karen features a work written by a living composer. She gave the U.S. premieres of Samy Moussa’s Violin Concerto Adrano with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Matthias Pintscher’s Concerto No. 2 Mar’eh with the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. under the composer’s baton, and Xi Wang’s YEAR 2020: Concerto for Violin, Trumpet and Orchestra with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth, conducted by Fabio Luisi. In 2018, she performed the world premiere of Samuel Adams’ Chamber Concerto with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Esa-Pekka Salonen, written for her and commissioned for the CSO’s MusicNOW 20th anniversary series.
Born in Tokyo, Karen began her musical career in Montréal and New York. She studied under the legendary pedagogue Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School before continuing her studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music and the New England Conservatory with Mauricio Fuks and Donald Weilerstein, respectively. She also studied privately for a formative period in Vienna with Heinrich Schiff. Karen participated as violinist, host, and narrator in a documentary film produced by NHK Japan about Antonio Stradivarius, The Mysteries of the Supreme Violin, which was broadcast worldwide on NHK WORLD.
​
Karen Gomyo, violin
Martha Strongin Katz,
viola
Violist Martha Strongin Katz was a founding member of the internationally acclaimed Cleveland Quartet, playing in it from its inception in 1969 until 1980. During those years she performed over 1,000 concerts, including appearances at the White House, the Grammy Awards, on NBC’s “Today” show, and in the major concert halls of Europe, North and South America, Israel, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Strongin Katz’s solo appearances include a Carnegie Hall performance of Berlioz’s Harold in Italy with conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, the Bartók Concerto with L’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, recital and concerto performances at the 1989 International Viola Congress, and countless recital and concerto appearances in cities such as Boston, Buffalo, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Rochester, San Francisco, and St. Louis.
She has served on numerous international juries, including the Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Naumberg Viola Competition. Ms. Katz is currently on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music and has also taught at Rice University, the Eastman School of Music, and Interlochen Arts Academy.
Strongin Katz plays a viola made by Lorenzo Storioni of Cremona in 1800.
She studied at the Curtis Institute, Juilliard School of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and University of Southern California with Lillian Fuchs and William Primrose on viola and Raphael Bronstein and Ivan Galamian on violin. She was the winner of the 1969 Geneva International Viola Competition and the Max Reger Award. You can hear her recordings on RCA Red Seal, and Philips.
​
The distinguished career of Texas-born cellist Ralph Kirshbaum encompasses the worlds of solo performance, chamber music, recording, and pedagogy, and places him in the highest echelon of today’s cellists. Possessed of “wonderful tone, utter technical reliability and the imagination to make the music feel both spontaneous and well planned” (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review), Kirshbaum enjoys the affection and respect not only of audiences worldwide, but also of his many eminent colleagues and students.
Kirshbaum has appeared with many of the world’s great orchestras, including the Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, BBC, and London Symphonies; the Los Angeles and Israel Philharmonics; the Cleveland Orchestra; Philharmonia; Zurich Tonhalle; and Orchestre de Paris. He has collaborated with many of the great conductors of the time, including Herbert Blomstedt, Semyon Bychkov, Christoph von Dohnányi, Andrew Davis, the late Sir Colin Davis, the late James Levine, the late Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Sir Antonio Pappano, the late André Previn, Sir Simon Rattle, Leonard Slatkin, and the late Sir Georg Solti. Kirshbaum has appeared frequently at such prominent international festivals as Edinburgh, Bath, Verbier, Lucerne, Aspen, La Jolla, Santa Fe, Music@Menlo, Ravinia, and New York’s Mostly Mozart.
An unusual component of Kirshbaum’s distinguished legacy is the creation of cello festivals. Kirshbaum founded the RNCM Manchester International Cello Festival in 1988, the final iteration of which was awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Music Award for Concert Series and Festivals in 2007. In 2012, Kirshbaum inaugurated the highly successful Piatigorsky International Cello Festival in Los Angeles, centered at the University of Southern California – Thornton School of Music. A rare opportunity for artists to collaborate with and to interact with one another, the Festival returned to Los Angeles in May 2016.
Renowned for his pedagogy, Kirshbaum served on the faculty of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester for 38 years. In 2008, he accepted the Gregor Piatigorsky Chair in Violoncello at the University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music, where he served as Chair of the Strings Department from 2016 to 2022. In July of 2016, Kirshbaum received an Honorary Doctorate of Music from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. He is Founder/Honorary President of the Pierre Fournier Award, as well as Honorary President of the London Cello Society, and continues to serve as Artistic Advisor of IMS Prussia Cove. Kirshbaum previously served a five-year term on the United States President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
Having enjoyed a thirty-year collaboration with pianist Peter Frankl and violinist Gyorgy Pauk, Kirshbaum has appeared frequently in recent years with Pinchas Zukerman, Robert McDuffie, Lawrence Dutton, Peter Jablonski, and pianist Shai Wosner. Other recent collaborators include Leif Ove Andsnes, Joshua Bell, Yefim Bronfman, Midori, Lang Lang, Vadim Repin, Joseph Swensen, Pepe Romero, and the Emerson and Takács String Quartets.
Kirshbaum and Wosner performed Beethoven cycles throughout the U.S. and Great Britain. The live recording of their performance at London’s Wigmore Hall, released on the Onyx Classics label, received a five-star review from Classical Music Magazine, which raved: “Kirshbaum…is in fine form with distinctive rich-yet-lithe tone and deeply intuitive phrasing. No detail is overlooked, yet each piece is allowed to unfold organically.” Kirshbaum also has performed the complete cycle of Bach Cello Suites in Wigmore Hall, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in Sydney, Edinburgh, Lyon and San Francisco. A London Times reviewer wrote of Kirshbaum’s solo Bach Suites recording for EMI/Virgin Classics: “There are more than 20 complete recordings of Bach’s Cello Suites currently in the catalogue, and of all those I have reviewed in recent years, few have given me as much pleasure as these new performances by Ralph Kirshbaum.”
Kirshbaum’s world premiere recording of Tippett’s Triple Concerto for Philips was named a Gramophone Magazine “Record of the Year.” Kirshbaum has recorded the Elgar and Walton Concerti for Chandos; the Ravel, Shostakovich, and Brahms Trios for EMI; the Barber Concerto and Sonata for EMI/Virgin Classics; the Shostakovich and Prokofiev Sonatas with Peter Jablonski for Altara Music; the Brahms Double and Beethoven Triple Concerti for BMG Classics with Pinchas Zukerman, John Browning, and the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach; and the Schubert Quintet with the Takács Quartet for Hyperion.
The rare Montagnana Cello that Kirshbaum plays once belonged to the 19th-century virtuoso Alfredo Piatti.
​
Ralph Kirshbaum, cello
Each summer's master clinicians are subject to change.
