Family, Friendship, and Love

Anoush Pogossian, Clarinet and Amber Ginmi Scherer, Piano

  • Amy Beach (1867-1944); arr. Anoush Pogossian - Romance, Op. 23 (1893) (6’)
  • Reena Esmail (b. 1983) - Jhula Jhule (2017) (11’)
  • Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) - Clarinet Sonata in Eb Major, Op. 120 No. 2 (1894) (22’)
  • Allegro amabile
  • Allegro appassionato
  • Andante con moto - Allegro
  • Program Notes:
  • This program is bound together by love, but not only of a romantic nature. While celebrating the lush quality of the Romantic era, our selected pieces also speak to the closeness we hold dear with our friends, family, and cultures.
  • Amy Beach's Romance opens the program, played by clarinet instead of the intended violin, this melody is one that envelops and takes over any listener, regardless of the instrument. The work's title alludes to the style and era of the late Romantic composer, but a love of friendship also rings through the piece, as it was dedicated to her close friend and violinist Maud Powell.
  • Along a similar vein of dedication, Reena Esmail’s Jhula Jhule combines two Indian folk songs that played a large role in the composer's childhood, one from each side of her grandparents. Esmail describes this work as the piece being “the first time I’ve felt able to bring songs from my own family into my music, and into the Western concert hall. I think – I hope – I’ve finally found a point of resonance.” Throughout this piece, the two different folk songs dance and meld together until they become indistinguishable, and form one shimmering, mellifluous love letter to her family.
  • To end our program, we find Johannes Brahms at the end of his life with his Clarinet Sonata in Eb Major. Brahms had sworn off composition and retired a few years prior, but was drawn back to writing after meeting the German clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, who became his close friend, collaborator, and muse-- so much so that Brahms wrote three other major works for him, vastly expanding the clarinet's chamber repertoire. These pieces, among Brahms’ other contributions in his final years, are treasured for their warmth, depth and intimacy, and feel like a bittersweet farewell.

Armenian-American clarinetist Anoush Pogossian is a performer and music educator based in New York City. A fellow in Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, Anoush is pursuing her Artist Diploma at The Juilliard School under the tutelage of Anthony McGill and Alan R. Kay. Dedicated to commissioning and performing new music, Anoush was recently named recipient of the 2025 Robert Sherman Award for Music Education and Community Outreach for “Komitas and Friends: Armenian Folk Music, Then and Now,” an ongoing cultural exchange project to commission, record, and perform works for clarinet each based on a different Armenian folk song. Through Juilliard’s Office of Community Engagement, she worked with music classrooms across NYC public schools as a Morse Teaching Artist Fellow, and in the Music Advancement Program. She often performs and volunteers with Music for Food, and is also a performer and teaching artist for Project Music Heals Us.

Recent performances at chamber music festivals and series include Yellow Barn, Skaneateles, Norfolk, Green Room Ensemble, Sebago-Long Lake, Apple Hill, and with groups including Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Westside Chamber Players, Washington Heights Chamber Orchestra, and Riverside Symphony. In recent chamber music appearances, she has performed alongside artists including Kim Kashkashian, Shai Wosner, Natasha Brofsky, Hsin-Yun Huang, Anthony Marwood, Frank Huang, Anthony McGill, and members of the Brentano and Katarina String Quartets.

A 2020 U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts, Anoush holds an M.M. from Juilliard, as well as a B.A. in Psychology with honors from Columbia University.

Amber Scherer is a pianist and educator based in NYC. Her life and work are rooted in her love of collaboration and finding community in music.

Scherer works daily with operatic singers in art-song, recital, and opera. She loves studying language and literature in preparation for her vocal collaboration and has served as a repetiteur on operas at The Juilliard School, including Britten’s The Turn of the Screw, Manon by Massenet, and L’heure espagnol by Ravel. Scherer also enjoys playing with instrumentalists and will appear in recitals this season with violin, viola, cello, horn, clarinet, and wind quintet.
Scherer’s passion for education and community work was what first brought her to NYC, as a 2021-22 Teaching Artist with AmeriCorps. She simultaneously joined the faculty at Brooklyn Music School and has since taught private lessons, group classes, and outreach courses there.

For her own education, Scherer has attended summer programs such as the Tanglewood Music Center and Music Academy of the West. During her fellowship there in 2025, she won first prize in Music Academy’s Duo Competition with cellist Mia Kim Bernard.

Scherer holds Bachelor’s degrees in Piano Performance and Psychology from Oberlin, a Master’s in Collaborative Piano from The Juilliard School, and currently studies as a doctoral candidate at Juilliard. Her mentors include Jonathan Feldman, Renate Tsuyako Rohlfing, and Lydia Brown.

About the Dame Myra Hess Concerts

The concerts are generously sponsored by the Paul M. Angell Family Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council and by individual donors.

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