Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel - Visiting Artist Series

The Williams College Department of Music presents Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel as part of the Visiting Artist Series  This event is free and open to the public.

Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel presents an all-French program including Francis Poulenc – Sonata for Violin and Piano; Olivier Messiaen – “Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus,” from Quartet for the End of Time; and Albéric Magnard – Sonata in G Major for Violin and Piano, op. 13.

Engaging, imaginative programming and dazzling, probing artistry are hallmarks of the Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel. Individually, Judith Ingolfsson and Vladimir Stoupel are both seasoned soloists, who have won acclaim for their performances around the globe. Together, they create connections, tell untold stories and take audiences on journeys to the heart of chamber music. A recent world premiere of Paul Arma’s Sonata for Violin and Piano at the Konzerthaus Berlin was hailed as the “sensation of the evening” by Deutschlandfunk – “There was an intensity in the performance that no one on the audience could escape.”

The Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel regularly participates in renowned concert series and festivals throughout the world, among them Germany’s Brandenburgische Sommerkonzerte, Konzerthaus Berlin, Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival and Chemnitz’s Villa Esche, Paris’s “Voix Etouffées” and Krakow’s “New Music Festival.” In the United States, the Duo has appeared at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, Brooklyn’s Bargemusic, University of Colorado Boulder, New Mexico’s Music in Corrales and Denver’s Englewood Cultural Arts Center.

For their project “Concert-Centenaire,” the Duo received the official designation “Centenaire” from the French government, an award given to help promote innovative, creative and exceptionally structured concepts centered on the centennial of the First World War. The project explores French music written from the Belle Époque to the end of the WWI, with a special focus on composers whose lives were either heavily impacted or even terminated by this calamitous conflict. The project resulted in a 2016 Accentus Music release of a 3-CD set of scores by Gabriel Fauré, Albéric Magnard, Rudi Stephan and Louis Vierne.

Also active in the recording studios, “En Hommage: Simon Laks” was issued on EDA in 2010, with the Duo’s next CD including works of Stravinsky and Shostakovich for Audite, an album that received a 2013 ICMA nomination. Following the “Concert-Centenaire” album,  “Blues, Blanc, Rouge,” with the sonatas of Ravel, Ferroud and Poulenc was issued in 2017, also on Accentus. The Duo’s “La Belle Époque: Works by Eugène Ysaÿe, Théodore Dubois and César Franck,” was released in 2019 on GENUIN, while their most recent albums- violin sonatas of Rathaus, Tiessen and Arma, Rebecca Clarke’s sonatas for viola and violin – were released in 2021 and 2023, respectively, on OEHMS Classics.

Judith Ingolfsson and Vladimir Stoupel are the artistic directors of the festival “Aigues-Vives en Musiques” in southern France, which they co-founded in 2009, as well as the festival “The Last Rose of Summer” in Berlin and the International Bach Academy Eisenach. Since 2017, the artists also curate two concert series: “Duo Plus” at the Mendelssohn-Remise Berlin and “Wednesday at the Institut” at the Institut Français Berlin.

A Russian-born French citizen, Vladimir Stoupel was decorated in 2022 by the French State as Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

THE ARTISTS’ THOUGHTS ON THE DUO:
“The Duo Ingolfsson-Stoupel was established with the goal of exploring new paths and directions in the intimate atmosphere of the violin-piano recital, and we have found common interests and passions in the music of the 20^th Century.

Our aim is to create and present programs that explore the countless fascinating connections among composers, history and the power of musical communication. Within this context, many projects were born in and since the decade we have worked together. Many of the key composers from the 20^th Century are overlooked in concert repertoire, in part because so many of these visionaries had foreshortened careers, falling victim to the First and Second World Wars. To bring these discoveries to light, we develop performance and recording projects, with the aim of restoring these pivotal scores to the stage, so that they will become a permanent component of our regular concert life.

A recent example of such a restorative project was the world premiere performance of Paul Arma’s 1949  Sonata for Violin and Piano. The work is as yet unpublished, but we obtained the manuscript from the composer’s son, and we were thrilled that Deutschlandfunk reviewed our performance as the “sensation of the evening.” It is this kind of experience – bringing a completely unknown work onto the concert stage and successfully communicating its immense strength and value – that makes our work together so rewarding and worthwhile.

We are both experienced, seasoned soloists. Playing alone or performing a concerto is a very different experience from playing and performing as a team. As a duo, we each have the privilege and challenge of constant feedback during rehearsal, feeding mutual inspiration and pushing us to new limits, technically and artistically, neither of us might be able to imagine or achieve alone. This is, essentially, what makes this partnership so special to both of us and what makes the resulting performances so gratifying.”

 

Photo Credit: Marko Priske

 

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