6 Summertime Concerts Series – IV: Aoife Burke and Alexander Bernstein

For the fourth of the 6 Summertime Concerts at Triskel, cellist Aoife Burke and pianist Alexander Bernstein present a programme of staple cello and piano repertoire, comprising the last of Beethoven’s five cello sonatas and Rachmaninoff’s mystic and passionate work for the same combination.
 
Musicians
Aoife Burke – Cello
Alexander Bernstein – Piano
 
Programme
Beethoven – Sonata for Cello and Piano in D Major, Op. 102, No. 2
Rachmaninoff – Sonata for Cello and Piano in G minor, Op. 19
 
Cork native Aoife Burke leads a diverse career as a recitalist, chamber musician, orchestral player, curator and producer. Selected by the Arts Council as a recipient of a Next Generation Artist Bursary 2020, Aoife is a member of the Opalio Piano Trio and the Banbha String Quartet, supported by the National String Quartet Foundation.
 
Aoife studied at undergraduate level with Emma Ferrand at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, graduating in 2014 with a first-class honours Bachelor of Music degree and an LRSM Diploma in Performance with Distinction. For her third year, she undertook an Erasmus study exchange to the Folkwang Universität der Künste in Essen, Germany, where she joined the cello class of Christoph Richter and the chamber music class of Andreas Reiner. During the course of her studies, Aoife won the Raphael Sommer Music Scholarship and partook in the Britten-Pears Young Artist Programme. She has participated in masterclasses with such renowned cellists as Raphael Wallfisch, Ralph Kirshbaum, Miklós Perényi and Frans Helmerson. Aoife subsequently obtained a Master of Arts with Distinction from the CIT Cork School of Music, where she studied under Christopher Marwood, and pursued further study on the Performance Certificate Course (Corso di Perfezionamento) at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, Italy, with Paolo Bonomini and Francesco Dillon. 
 
An avid chamber musician, Aoife has collaborated with The Vanbrugh, the ConTempo String Quartet, Musici Ireland and the Gavin Bryars, Kirkos, Ficino and Crash Ensembles, and has performed at numerous national and international music festivals, including the NCH Chamber Music Gathering, the NCH Perspectives Series, West Cork Chamber Music Festival (where she recorded for RTÉ Lyric FM), Music in Drumcliffe, New Music Dublin, Cork Midsummer Festival, the RNCM Chamber Music Festival, Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte di Montepulciano, the Aurora Chamber Music Festival (Sweden) and Barry Douglas’ Clandeboye Festival, where she was awarded the Special Festival Prize. Her numerous national prizes and awards also include the RTÉ Lyric FM Award, Hazel de Courcy Lewis Cup, Bach Prize and Clyde Twelvetrees Cup at Feis Ceoil, Dublin and the Capuchin Order Perpetual Cup and Bursary at Feis Maitiú, Cork.
 
Aoife is grateful for the generous support of the EMI Music Sound Foundation, Cork City Council, the Arts Council and Music Network’s Music Capital Scheme, funded by The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. Music Network is funded by the Arts Council.
 
Alexander Bernstein, a San Francisco native, began piano lessons at age seven, later moving to Walla Walla, Washington, where he studied for nine years. Bernstein received a Bachelor of Music from Harvard University in May 2010, where he studied privately with both Patricia Zander and Stephen Drury of the New England Conservatory. He also completed a master’s degree in piano performance at the Royal Irish Academy of Music in Dublin in 2012. He completed his Artist Diploma at Shenandoah Conservatory under the tutelage of John O’Conor in 2016.
After making his symphonic debut in 1999, Bernstein has performed concerti with orchestras in the United States and Europe, most recently including performances of Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 3 with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra and the Shenandoah Conservatory Symphony Orchestra in Virginia, U.S.A. He has given solo recitals in the United States, Canada, Ireland, the U.K., Germany, Italy and Romania.
Bernstein is an avid devotee of new music, studying and premiering works of living composers as well as Berio, Ligeti, Ives, and Cage. In September 2015, he recorded a solo CD of works by the Irish composer Ryan Molloy.
Bernstein has had much success in competitions, recently winning 2nd Prize and the RTÉ Lyric FM Special Prize in the 2015 Dublin International Piano Competition, 3rd Prize in the 2015 Verona International Piano Competition, and 3rd Prize in the 2015 Gian Battista Viotti International Piano Competition. He also received 1st Prize in the 2011 Irish Freemasons Young Musician of the Year Competition.