Horacio Nuguid and Friends
March 1st, 2025
7:30 PM
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Christ United Methodist Church
Featuring 
Horacio Nuguid, pianist
Helen Chang Haertzen, violinist
Stephanie Arado, violinist
Sifei Cheng, violist
Wilhelmina Smith, cellist

Program
TBD
We welcome back our friends from the Minnesota Orchestra, forming a string quartet to perform, with pianist Horacio Nuguid, one of Schumann’s finest compositions and a major work of 19th century chamber music, the Piano Quintet in E-flat Major. Also in the program are trios by Mozart and Clarke.

Horacio Nuguid

Pianist Horacio Nuguid has captivated audiences with his "beautiful tone" and "elegance." In addition to several well-known piano concertos, Nuguid has performed lesser-known works also, such as Edward MacDowell's Concerto in A Minor, Clara Schumann's Konzertsatz in F Minor, Mario Pilati's Suite, and Ferdinand Ries' Grand Variations on Rule Britannia with orchestras in the Philippines, Mexico, and United States. As the pianist and artistic director of the Rochester Chamber Music Society, Nuguid has been performing with distinguished artists in the region for more than twenty seasons. He was the recipient of the Ardee Award (Mayor's Award) for Outstanding Artist in the city of Rochester. Nuguid received his music performance degrees from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila (BM), the University of Northern lowa (MM), and the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign (DMA). As a music educator, Dr. Nuguid has presented master classes internationally and has served as an adjudicator for piano competitions in Minnesota. He also has served as artist/faculty at the Young Artist World Piano Festival in Minnesota for over 20 years and has taught as guest artist at the Philippine High School for the Arts. Dr. Nuguid recently accepted the position of Co-Artistic Director at Bethel University Summer Piano Academy in Minnesota. In August of 2023, Nuguid published an anthology of piano pieces by Filipino composers, which he edited with annotations. He has been promoting this pioneering piano music collection through a series of lecture recitals in the Philippines and United States.

Helen Chang Haertzen

Helen Chang Haertzen joined the Minnesota Orchestra's first violin section in 2003. In 2006 she appeared as soloist in Beethoven's Triple Concerto with the Orchestra under Andrew Litton's direction. She has performed often at the Orchestra's chamber music concerts.

Haertzen, who formerly was associate and principal second violin of the Bamberg Symphony in Germany, has toured with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and played with the Orchestra of St. Luke's. She also served on the faculty of Jeunesses Musicales World Orchestra, teaching orchestral training and chamber music to international students. As soloist, Haertzen has performed with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops Esplanade, Junge Philharmonie Erlangen, and with the Staatsorchester Braunschweig.

Growing up in the Boston area, Haertzen studied under Bo Youp Hwang and Roman Totenberg. She attended Philadelphia's Curtis Institute, the Salzburg Mozarteum and the San Francisco Conservatory. Her principal teachers also included Szymon Goldberg, Felix Galimir, Ruggiero Ricci and Camilla Wicks. Haertzen was a prizewinner of the Karol Lipinski-Wieniawski Competition in Poland. In 2017, the Minnesota State Arts Board awarded her the Artist Initiative Grant.

Haertzen was a longtime member of the Isles Ensemble and has performed as a guest artist with the Walden Chamber Players and the Bamberg String Quartet. She has taken part in innovative collaborations with dancer and choreographer Bill T. Jones at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and collaborated with the Boston Ballet in a performance of Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending. In Boston, she has appeared at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Goethe Institute. She played the Jascha Heifetz 'David' 1742 Guarneri del Gesù violin in recital at San Francisco's Legion of Honor and has appeared as a recitalist throughout Europe. In 2005 Cavalli Records released Haertzen's recording of the Bach Partitas for Solo Violin, which drew critical acclaim from the American Record Guide. She has also produced and played on American Avenues, a medley of American classics for Centaur Records.
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In addition to performing, she enjoys teaching. Her students have gone on to study at top conservatories and music festivals, and to win orchestra positions.

Stephanie Arado

Violinist Stephanie Arado's career encompasses a wide range of performance and teaching experience. Born in Chicago, Ms. Arado played her first solo recital at the age of eight and went on to debut with the Chicago Symphony at the age of twelve. She continued her solo career, performing as soloist with the Detroit, St. Louis and Minnesota Orchestras as well as many others across the nation. Active in competitions in her early years she was a prize winner in several prestigious competitions, winning first prize in the Julius Stulberg and Irving M. Klein Competitions and was a semi-finalist at the Tchaikovsky International Competition. Ms. Arado's musical pedigree has been enriched by a diverse collection of the foremost pedagogues of our time, including Almita and Roland Vamos, Paul Kantor, Dorothy Delay, Paul Rolland and Camilla Wicks.

She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Western Illinois University and holds a Masters of Musical Performance from the Juilliard School. Ms. Arado has participated in chamber music festivals both nationally and internationally and has had the privilege to coach and perform with such masters as Paul Tortelier, Joseph Silverstein, Joel Smirnoff and Yuri Bashmet. Ms. Arado's experience extends to the orchestral world where she spent twenty-two years as assistant concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra and also served one season as concertmaster of the Colorado Symphony. In 2012, Ms. Arado resigned from her position with the Minnesota Orchestra to devote more time to teaching and chamber music. A recipient of a McKnight Foundation Grant for Performing Artists, Ms. Arado currently holds positions as assistant professor of violin at the University of Minnesota and co-artistic director of the Bakken Ensemble.

Sifei Cheng

Born in Taiwan and raised in California, violist Sifei Cheng joined the Minnesota Orchestra in 1995. He has served as principal viola of the Charleston Symphony, New World Symphony and Juilliard Orchestra, and has led sections under Michael Tilson Thomas, Eiji Oue and Christoph Eschenbach. As a chamber musician, he has played in the Ravinia Festival, Caramoor Music Festival, Taos Chamber Music Festival, Pacific Music Festival and the New York String Seminar. Some of his past coaches include Samuel Rhodes, Miriam Fried, Paul Biss, Alan de Veritch, the Tokyo String Quartet and the American String Quartet. He has collaborated in chamber music with artists such as Joshua Bell, Pamela Frank, Andrew Litton and Jon Kimura Parker. Cheng was also recently appointed principal viola of the Minnesota Bach Ensemble.

His pursuits outside of classical music have included recording for the late and legendary Prince, as well as serving as principal viola in the Game of Thrones Live Concert Experience which debuted in 2017 in St. Paul.

Cheng holds a degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and has also studied at the Juilliard School in New York. His past teachers include Karen Tuttle, Michael Tree and William Kennedy.

Wilhelmina Smith

Wilhelmina Smith is an artist of intense commitment, poetic insight and dazzling versatility. She is a cellist whose artistic mission embraces a conversation through music, one that enthusiastically encompasses the music of the present placed within the context of a living past. As a soloist and recitalist as well as a collaborative musician and festival director, Mina has consistently advocated for composers with whom she has developed vital relationships, to have their music creatively positioned within an intellectually engaging context and performed with the utmost passion and technical assurance.
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Ms. Smith was awarded a 2015-2016 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Performing Musicians. She made her solo debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra while a student at the Curtis Institute of Music and in 1997 was a prizewinner in the Leonard Rose International Cello Competition. She has been soloist with orchestras nationally and internationally including the Orquesta Millenium of Guatemala and the Ural Philharmonic Orchestra of Russia and has performed recitals across the US and Japan.
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She has been a guest artist with the Philadelphia and Boston Chamber Music Societies, and the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and is a founding member of Music from Copland House. She has performed regularly in festivals such as the Marlboro Music Festival and Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. In 2005, she formed the Variation String Trio with violinist Jennifer Koh and violist Hsin-Yun Huang, a group that has performed across the US and Europe, and in 2012 formed a piano trio with pianist Lydia Artymiw and violinist Erin Keefe. She is founder and Artistic Director of Salt Bay Chamberfest, on the coast of Maine; a festival that has been home to performers and composers of international renown for over two decades.
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Ms. Smith's solo CD of sonatas by Britten and Schnittke with pianist Thomas Sauer was released on the Arabesque label in 2006. Her recordings of chamber music include the complete chamber works of Aaron Copland, and works by Sebastian Currier, John Musto, Pierre Jalbert, Jennifer Higdon. Tamar Muskal. Kaija Saariaho. Osvaldo Goliiov. Michael Torke, and Aaron Jay Kernis.
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