Performance Series

Chamber Music
Buy the six-event series package for the $125.00 subscription price and save 12% (available through September 12).
eighth blackbird
Friday, September 12, 8:00 p.m., $18
Since storming onto the classical music scene a decade ago, eighth blackbird has thrilled audiences throughout the world with their fluent, engaging musical flair and boldly innovative performance style. The Grammy-winning ensemble returns to the Williams Center to perform their new two-part commission, The Only Moving Thing. Part one, Steve Reich’s Double Sextet, features the interplay of live performance and recorded sound, with virtuosic rhythmic patterns and joyous, dance-like melodies. Part two, singing in the dead of the night by the Bang on a Can All-Stars composer collective of David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and David Gordon, is vividly theatrical, with stage movement choreographed by Susan Marshall.

Guarneri String Quartet
Saturday, October 11, 8:00 p.m., $25
Dr. Aaron J. Litwak Concert
On September 30, 1983, the Guarneri String Quartet played the dedication concert for the Williams Center for the Arts, launching the stellar procession of world-class ensembles that have brought inspired music-making to our hall ever since. We are delighted to celebrate our landmark anniversary year in a “rededication” concert with the Guarneri, as they bid farewell to their towering career in this valedictory tour. Theprogram includes two of Beethoven’s late quartets, each a masteWDIYrpiece of deep spirituality and emotional depth—String Quartet No. 12 in E-flat Major, Op. 127 and String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132.
WDIY 88.1 FM, Lehigh Valley Community Public Radio, is our media partner for this concert.
Jeremy Denk
Thursday, November 6, 8:00 p.m., $15
Jeremy Denk made his mark with Williams Center audiences two years ago as soloist with Orpheus in its Brandenburg Redux program. This year he brings the spectacular program he will perform four days later in his Carnegie Hall debut: Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 29 in B-Flat Major, Op. 106—the heroic “Hammerklavier” Sonata—and Charles Ives’ deeply spiritual 1920 “Concord” Sonata, which pays tribute to the New England transcendentalists, with the four movements dedicated to (and invoking) Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau. The Boston Globe calls Denk an exceptional pianist blessed with “an unerring sense of the music’s dramatic structure and a great actor’s intuition for timing.”

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Tuesday, December 2, 8:00 p.m., $25
Absent from the Williams Center for five years, Chamber Music Society returns with an all-star ensemble of 12 musicians, bearing a treasure trove of some of the most cherished baroque concertos, including Vivaldi’s bristling Concerto for Four Violins, Corelli’s pastoral “Christmas Concerto,” and J.S. Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 4 and 5. The ensemble features frequent Williams Center guests Ida Kavafian, Carol Wincenc, Jon Gibbons, Fred Sherry, and Paul Neubauer, along with rising stars from Lincoln Center—Lily Francis, David Kim, and Priscilla Lee.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg
Monday, March 23, 8:00 p.m., $29
J. Mahlon and Grace Buck Concert
Formidable violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is featured in this concert as guest soloist for the infectious pleasures of Astor Piazzolla’s tango-driven Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. Orpheus’ ongoing New Brandenburgs project is represented by a new work by celebrated American composer Melanie Wagner, based on Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5. The program also includes Haydn’s Symphony No. 6, “Le Matin (Dawn)” and with Johannes Brahms’ imaginative Variations on a Theme by Haydn.
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with soprano Susan Graham
Saturday, May 9, 8:00 p.m., $29
Croasdale Concert
Our 25th anniversary season reaches a glorious conclusion with this concert featuring Metropolitan Opera darling Susan Graham, who joins Orpheus to perform a set of works by Ned Rorem, regarded by many as the most accomplished craftsman of American song. Haydn’s Symphony No. 26, “Lamentatione,” and two early 20th-century masterworks, Ravel’s Pavane pour une enfante defunte and Stravinsky’s Dances Concertantes, complete the program.

Chamber Music Fans—Don't Miss This Special Non-Subscription Event
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with Anoushka Shankar
Thursday, January 29, 8:00 p.m., $33
In a Williams Center 25th Anniversary commission, Orpheus and sitar master Anoushka Shankar perform a new Concerto for Sitar and Orchestra by the great Ravi Shankar. The evening also includes Haydn’s Symphony No. 99, incidental music from Mozart’s Thamos, King of Egypt, and Zoltan Kodaly’s tone poem, Summer Music. The Shankar commission was generously supported by funding from the Amaranth Foundation.


last updated July 15, 2008

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