Violist

This poetically lyrical program, infused with unforced virtuosity and memorable melodies, is the perfect way to spend a summer evening. The witty sophistication of Germaine Tailleferre, the only woman in the early 20th century group of French composers known as Les Six, sets up a fascinating contrast with a passionately dramatic trio rooted in Armenian folk music. PCMF’s 30th summer season concludes with Schubert’s sunny Octet, with its bountiful array of strings and winds, hummable tunes, and genial Viennese charm.

EPSG:4326

Program IV: Grand Finale

University of Southern Maine

Beethoven's "Kreutzer" Sonata, one of his most brilliant and popular works, has an extraordinarily intimate emotional intensity, which serves as a primary plot point of Tolstoy's controversial novella of the same name, by which the narrator is driven to murderous obsession. Janáček's string quartet, premiered 100 years ago, reflects on the psychological drama and obsessive qualities in Tolstoy's story. By intertwining these two landmark works with selected readings, this fascinating program dramatically illustrates the sources of artistic inspiration.

Program III: The Kreutzer Connection

CONCERT PROGRAM VI: Chamber Music Now

Menlo School Campus

Music from the Baroque era stimulates the senses, lifts the spirits, and inspires faith in all things good. The evolution of everything in music—from the art of counterpoint to the invention of new forms—transformed Baroque composers into unstoppable creators as they experimented with new musical styles and combinations of instruments. In this opening concert, we’ll experience six trailblazing composers showing their skills in a colorful collection of instruments and ensembles.

Concert Program I: Baroque Splendor

Late Night Rose: Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and Price

Rose Studio

Rose Studio: Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and Price

Bestowing possibly the greatest music review in history, Joseph Haydn remarked to Leopold Mozart in 1785, “Before God and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name.” In this program, you will hear the exact quartet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart that inspired these words, preceded by one of Haydn’s finest works that inspired Mozart to dedicate quartets to the elder master. French composers Reynaldo Hahn, Paul Dukas, Vincent D’Indy, and Charles-Marie Widor contribute colorful homages to Haydn, for solo piano, written on the hundredth anniversary of his death. Concluding the concert is a bracing juxtaposition of the defining giants of Impressionism, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, bringing their mutual respect—and perhaps even rivalry—to life on stage.

This concert is preceded by a free afternoon Prelude Performance at 5 p.m. by the 2022 International Program artists. Prelude programs will be announced in May.

CONCERT PROGRAM V Admiration

The Overture Concerts feature International Program performers in collaboration with festival main-stage artists, providing a unique experience for audience members and musicians alike. This summer, International Program artists will perform across two concert programs side by side with violinists Bella Hristova, James Thompson, and Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violists Matthew Lipman and Paul Neubauer, cellist Mihai Marica, pianist Shai Wosner, and clarinetist Tommaso Lonquich.

This concert series functions as an “overture” to the future of chamber music: world-renowned festival artists share their knowledge, experience, and expertise with the burgeoning International Program musicians as they perform side by side. The artists collectively bridge the gap between the traditions of the past, the master performers of today, and the exciting musical possibilities of tomorrow. Please join us to experience the fruits of their collaboration and to witness a glimpse of the bright future of chamber music.

OVERTURE CONCERT I Reicha And Mendelssohn

The festival begins on a celebratory note, connecting Joseph Haydn, the father of the Classical style, with the Baroque era’s greatest master, Johann Sebastian Bach. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, son of Johann Sebastian, composed his dashing A major Cello Concerto only three years after his father’s death, setting a new standard of instrumental brilliance. In Haydn’s dramatic cantata, the heroine Ariadne is abandoned during the night on the island of Naxos by her lover Theseus, whom she had saved from the Minotaur. Haydn’s ever popular C major Violin Concerto follows, and the evening closes with Johann Sebastian Bach’s secular cantata Be still, stop chattering (in essence, a short comic opera), which tells the humorous, cautionary tale of a young woman addicted to coffee.

CONCERT PROGRAM I Concertos and Cantatas

Concert Program III begins with music by two of central Europe’s most distinct compositional voices. The program begins with Leoš Janá&ccaron;ek’s haunting Violin Sonata, followed by the riveting Sonata for Solo Cello by György Ligeti. These preface a beloved work by one of Western music’s most hallowed masters: Johannes Brahms’s String Sextet in B-flat, composed in his twenty-seventh year, rings with a grand sonority, affirming what Robert Schumann heard in the young Brahms’s chamber writing as “veiled symphonies.”

Concert Program III

Concert Program II brings together three works that contrast brooding tempers with light, lyricism, and optimism. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, the first significant work of its kind, would inaugurate a rich repertoire tradition, nurtured in subsequent generations by Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvorák, and many others. Franz Schubert’s sublime Fantasy in F minor likewise adopts a genre closely associated with Mozart–four-hand piano–but which the Prince of Song makes unmistakably his own. The program concludes with the mesmerizing Piano Trio in F-sharp minor by the twentieth-century Armenian composer Arno Babajanian.

Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu

Violist

Events

Aug 19, 2023

Program IV: Grand Finale · Portland Chamber Music Festival

Aug 17, 2023

Program III: The Kreutzer Connection · Portland Chamber Music Festival

Aug 5, 2023

CONCERT PROGRAM VI: Chamber Music Now · Music@Menlo

Jul 15, 2023

Concert Program I: Baroque Splendor · Music@Menlo

Apr 27, 2023

Late Night Rose: Beethoven, Rachmaninov, and Price · Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

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