Schubert/Schumann: Cello Works

"Antonio Meneses is a master of his instrument and defers modestly to Bach."
- * * * * * / * * * * * (highest rating), Benchmark Recording, BBC Music Magazine

Editor's Choice Recording of the Month Gramophone March 2007

"Virtuoso and sensitive players who put themselves at the music's service. As so often with Avie, an almost entirely unhyped disc has emerged to knock everybody's socks off. There are starrier cellists than Antonio Meneses and more glamorous pianists than Gérard Wyss (although both have extremely distinguished careers, with Meneses a member of the Beaux Arts Trio), but they equal anyone in their esssaying of these Schubert and Schumann chamber works. Restrained but profound, the pair find the deep reflections on pain, on love, on life in these works."
(Gramophone)

Born in Recife, Brazil in 1957 into a family of musicians, Antonio Meneses began his cello studies at the age of ten. At the age of 16, he met the famous Italian cellist Antonio Janigro and was asked to join Janigro's classes in Düseldorf and later in Stuttgart. In 1977, Antonio won the first Prize at the ARD International Competition in Munich and in 1982; he was awarded first Prize and gold Medal at the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.

Regularly appearing in the music capitals of Europe, the Americas, and Asia, Antonio Meneses has performed with most of the world's leading orchestras such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, London Symphony, BBC Symphony, Concertgebouw, Vienna Symphony, the Czech Philharmonic, the Moscow, the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, the Bayerische Rundfunk Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra (Washington D.C.), in Buenos Aires, in Warsaw, in Brazil, and the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo. Among the conductors with whom he has collaborated are Herbert von Karajan, Riccardo Muti, Mariss Jansons, Claudio Abbado, Andre Previn, Andrew Davis, Semyon Bychkov, Herbert Blomstedt, Gerd Albrecht, Yuri Temirkanov, Kurt Sanderling, Neeme Järvi, Mstislav Rostropovitch, Vladimir Spivakov, and Riccardo Chailly.

Antonio is also a frequent guest at many important music festivals, including Puerto Rico (Festival Pablo Casals), Salzburg, Lucerne, the Vienna Festwochen, the Berlin Festwochen, the Prague Spring Festival, New York (Mostly Mozart Festival), Seattle, la Grange de Meslay, the Festival de Colmar, and the Jerusalem Chamber Music Festival.

A devoted chamber music performer, Antonio Meneses has collaborated with the Emerson Quartet and the Vermeer Quartet on tour as well as with pianists such as Nelson Freire, Menahem Pressler, Cristina Ortiz, and Gérard Wyss. Antonio has been a member of the Beaux Arts Trio since 1998.