April 13, 2024 • 2:14 pm 0
Wreath — for Franz Schubert is the latest creation from one of the world’s most-sought-after composers. “I am most grateful to the great Danish String Quartet for giving me the time and encouragement to realize and develop this new path in my work,” Adès writes in the freshly completed score.
My program notes for the Cal Performances performance in April 2024 can be found here.
Filed under: Cal Performances, chamber music, commissions, Danish String Quartet, Schubert, Thomas Adès
March 26, 2024 • 10:11 am Comments Off on A Visit to Sun Valley Music Festival in Winter
Here’s my report for Musical America on Sun Valley Music Festival’s recent winter season, which focused on the music of Brahms. Guest artist Jon Kimura Parker and members of the Sun Valley Festival Orchestra:
Ketchum, ID—In the 1930s, an ingenious combination of marketing and new technology (the design of modern chairlifts) transformed this former mining town and sheep-farming center into the country’s first destination ski resort—as well as a magnet for Hollywood celebrities….
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Filed under: Brahms, chamber music, Sun Valley Music Festival
March 6, 2024 • 5:17 pm Comments Off on Arditti Quartet at 50
Thursday marks the 50th anniversary to the day that Irvine Arditti and his colleagues gave their first concert. The Arditti Quartet would go on to become one of the leading advocates for new chamber music — from Ligeti, Xenakis, and Stockhausen (including the Helicopter Quartet) to their latest commissions from Toshio Hosokawa and Cathy Milliken.
My program text for the official 50th-anniversary concert at the Pierre Boulez Saal can be found here.
The program:
Jonathan Harvey (1939–2012)
String Quartet No. 1 (1977)
Cathy Milliken
In Speak for String Quartet (2023) world premiere
Toshio Hosokawa (*1955)
Oreksis for Piano Quintet (2023) world premiere
Intermission
Harrison Birtwistle (1934–2022)
The Tree of Strings for String Quartet (2007)
Filed under: Arditti Quartet, chamber music, Pierre Boulez Saal
January 21, 2024 • 12:23 pm Comments Off on Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2024 Winter Festival
Two blissful weekends of intimate music-making are about to start as Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2024 Winter Festival kicks off on Friday, 26 January. Artistic Director James Ehnes will appear in all six programs over the festival’s two weekends. On opening night, he’ll join colleagues Amy Schwartz Moretti, Che-Yen Chen, Cynthia Phelps, Edward Arron, and Efe Baltacıgil for Brahms’s String Sextet No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 18; the program also includes Ravel’s Violin Sonata No. 2 in G major and British composer Rebecca Clarke’s Piano Trio — part of this winter edition’s focus on 20th-century British composers.
Jan. 26-28 and Feb. 2-4; Benaroya Hall, 200 University St., Seattle; $30-$65; subscriptions and streaming options available; free prelude recital starts an hour before each concert; seattlechambermusic.org
Filed under: chamber music, James Ehnes, Seattle Chamber Music Society
August 17, 2023 • 11:40 pm Comments Off on Music on the Strait: 2023 Edition
This summer’s Music on the Strait summer festival of chamber music (19-27 August) opens on Saturday, 19 August, at the newly opened Field Arts & Events Hall in Port Angeles, WA. The opening night concert in the 500-seat Donna Morris Auditorium begins at 7pm and features Garrick Ohlsson and the Takács Quartet in a program of Brahms and Amy Beach, as well as the world premiere of a new work for violin and viola by 2023 composer-in-residence Lembit Beecher, which was written for Artistic Directors James Garlick and Richard O’Neill. It was inspired in part by the transformation of the Elwha River. This will be one of the first performances at the Field Arts and Events Hall .
The 19 August opening concert will be livestreamed here and on Music on the Strait’s homepage; you can also watch the concerts on 25 August and 27 August (check MotS’ homepage).
On 26 August at 7pm, also at Field Hall, Jeremy Denk performs Bach’s Complete Partitas; the students of the Olympic Strings Workshop will present a showcase at 6.15pm. For the festival finale on 27 August at 2pm, Jeremy Denk & Friends will play music by Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms.
Other events will take place at Maier Hall at Peninsula College in Port Angeles:
On Sunday 20 August at 2pm, Takács plays Haydn, Beethoven, and Bartók, and on Friday 25 August at 7pm, Noah Geller, Seattle Symphony’s concertmaster, makes his Music on the Strait debut together with James Garlick, Richard O’Neill, and Ani Aznavoorian in Grieg’s String Quartet in G minor and shares the stage with percussionist Mari Yoshinaga in Anton Prischepa’s Based on Actual Events for Violin and Marimba. The quartet will also perform Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Pisashi for string quartet.
Filed under: chamber music, music news, Music on the Strait
July 6, 2023 • 9:42 am Comments Off on Triplet of Trios Sets the Tone for Seattle’s Summer of Chamber Music
Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2023 Summer Festival is now in full swing. My review of the opening night concert:
Opening night concerts can be an invitation to default to lightweight programming, letting extramusical distractions become the focus. Not so at Seattle Chamber Music Society. The 2023 Summer Festival kicked off with a concert that kept the audience’s attention avidly fixed on the music at hand…
Filed under: chamber music, James Ehnes, Maurice Ravel, review, Seattle Chamber Music Society
May 10, 2023 • 2:36 am Comments Off on Thibaudet and the Colburn Ensemble in Berlin
Jean-Yves Thibaudet and an ensemble from the Colburn School perform a chamber program this evening at Boulez-Saal in Berlin.
Frank Gehry, architect of Boulez-Saal and a friend of Daniel Barenboim, has also designed a 100,000 square-foot expansion of the Colburn School campus in downtown LA, including a 1,000-seat, in-the-round performance space, a studio theater, dance studios, and public gardens and green spaces. Reuniting with Gehry for that project is another name familiar to Berliners: Yasuhisa Toyota of Nagata Acoustics, who served as acoustician for Boulez-Saal (along with other Gehry buildings, including Disney Concert Hall). The new Colburn performance hall, expected to open to the public in 2025, will have parallels with Boulez-Saal.
I wrote about tonight’s program here.
Filed under: architecture, chamber music, music news, Pierre Boulez Saal
February 8, 2023 • 9:38 am Comments Off on West-Eastern Divan Ensemble Tonight in Berlin
On the agenda at the Boulez-Saal in Berlin tonight is this program by the West-Eastern Divan Ensemble. It’s an interesting mix of Jörg Widmann, Dvořák, Hindemith, and Enescu. My program notes here.
Filed under: chamber music, Pierre Boulez Saal
January 28, 2023 • 6:41 am Comments Off on SCMS Winter Festival 2023
Seattle Chamber Music Society’s 2023 edition of the Winter Festival has started, presenting two weekends of chamber music by Beethoven, Fanny Mendelssohn, Ravel, William Grant Still, Julia Perry, et al. plus a new work by contemporary American composer Jeremy Turner, who is especially known for his TV and stage scores.
The second weekend of concerts includes the local premiere (Feb. 3) of Turner’s Six Mile House for clarinet, violin, piano, and cello. which was inspired by the Charleston, SC-based urban legend about Sweeney Todd-ish murders said to have been committed by an evil innkeeper couple.
SCMS Artistic Director James Ehnes will be onstage for the three concerts of the second weekend, playing works by Brahms, Shostakovich, and César Franck. And a free prelude recital is open to the public before each concert — no ticket required. Here’s the free prelude lineup:
January 27 – 6:30PM
Richard Strauss: Violin Sonata, Op.18
Arnaud Sussmann, violin
Jeewon Park, piano
January 28 – 6:30PM
Franz Schubert: Fantasie in F minor, D. 940
Dmitri Shostakovich: Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op. 67
SCMS Academy Musicians
January 29 – 2:00PM
Sergei Prokofiev: Piano Sonata No. 6, Op. 82
Adam Neiman, piano
February 3 – 6:30PM
Julia Perry: Prelude
William Grant Still: Three Visions
George Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue, solo version 1924
Andrew Armstrong, piano
February 4 – 6:30PM
Ludwig van Beethoven: Piano Trio in C minor, Op. 1 No. 3
SCMS Academy Musicians
February 5 – 2:00PM
Franz Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5
James Ehnes and Amy Schwartz Moretti, violins;
Che-Yen Chen, viola; Edward Arron, cello
Filed under: chamber music, James Ehnes, Seattle Chamber Music Society
December 27, 2022 • 2:38 pm Comments Off on Byron Schenkman & Friends: Beethoven, Carlos Simon, and more
Byron Schenkman & Friends continue their 10th-anniversary season with a program on Thursday, 29 December (at 7pm at Benaroya Hall), juxtaposing the piano trio format with lieder. Beethoven’s Archduke Trio, a pinnacle of the piano trio from 1810-11, will be heard alongside 2021 Sphinx Medal of Excellence winner Carlos Simon‘s luminous be still and know, a composition from 2015 inspired by an interview with Oprah Winfrey. Filling out the program are songs by Beethoven, Mozart, and Schubert featuring vocalist Martin Bakari, winner of the 2018 George London Competition.
The complete program is as follows:
be still and know for piano trio
Abendempfindung (“Evening Thoughts”) (K. 523)
Zufriedenheit (“Contentment”) (K. 473)
Du bist die Ruh (“You are Repose”) (D. 776)
Adelaide, op. 46
Allegro moderato
Scherzo
Andante cantabile, ma però con moto
Allegro moderato
Filed under: Byron Schenkman, chamber music
Arts & Culture Stories from NPR
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 