Performance Series

Chamber Music
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ETHEL
Friday, September 4, 8:00 p.m., $15
ETHEL’s “high octane” artistry straddles the arenas of classical chamber music and contemporary work, moving smartly and confidently from Bang on a Can marathons and BAM’s Next Wave Festival to the Grand Canyon Music Festival and the recent gala reopening of Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.

In the same creative mold as Kronos and Turtle Island, the group modulates traditional string quartet instrumentation into creative textures with amplification and sampling. Fiercely eclectic in their palette, they mix and mingle forms of the traditional Western canon with world music, jazz, and occasional rock and funk.

“ETHEL created a world in which classical music had never grown distant, a world in which it was as fresh and direct as crowds dancing in the street.” —The Wall Street Journal

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with violinist Janine Jansen
Wednesday, October 7, 8:00 p.m., $29
Orpheus launches its 23rd Williams Center season with Beethoven’s monumental Violin Concerto, featuring charismatic young Dutch violinist Janine Jansen as guest soloist. Classic FM critic Malcolm Hayes praises the “brilliant firepower and her darkly searching lyrical streak” in Jansen’s authoritative reading of Beethoven’s masterpiece. Dubbed “the queen of iTunes,” Jansen has broken all records for downloads of her fresh and youthful recordings.

The rest of the program revolves around the world of Bach and the baroque concerto. Aaron Jay Kernis’s new work, the fifth commissioned work in Orpheus’s New Brandenburgs series, draws from Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6; Anton Webern’s refined transcription of “Ricercare a 6” revisits Bach’s end-of-career Musical Offering; and Stravinsky’s “Dumbarton Oaks” Concerto, celebrates, in contemporary fashion, the instrumental clusters and solo virtuosity of the concerto grosso form.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Friday, November 13, 8:00 p.m., $20
Building upon last December’s thrilling CMSLC program of baroque concertos, we welcome this mixed repertory program of seasoned classics and new creations. Pianist Gilbert Kalish leads an all-star septet of players in a fascinating program anchored by two stellar works of grand scale: the brand new Septet by Argentine-born Mario Davidovsky, commissioned a year ago by the Chamber Music Society, and Franz Schubert’s magical “Trout” Quintet.

Trios by Beethoven and Camille Saint-Saens complete the program, showcasing the talents of violinist Arnaud Sussman, flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, cellist Fred Sherry, clarinetist José Franch-Ballester, and violist Paul Neubauer.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with pianist Angela Hewitt
Friday, February 5, 8:00 p.m., $29
Ottawa-born Angela Hewitt excels at the music of many composers, but it is with the keyboard works of J.S. Bach that her genius truly shines. Hailed by The Guardian as “the pre-eminent Bach pianist of our time,” Hewitt has recorded the complete works of Bach on Hyperion, praised by The Sunday Times as “one of the record glories of our age.”

Hewitt’s first collaboration with Orpheus showcases her in two works: the noble and pensive D minor Concerto by Bach, BWV 1052, and a new work by Peter Maxwell Davies, inspired by Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.

Also on the program are Stravinsky’s Concerto in D Major, “Basel,” described by Orpheus cellist Jonathan Spitz as “pungent, rhythmically vital, clear-textured,” perfectly balanced by Dvorak’s ever-popular Serenade for Strings, enlivened, in Spitz’s words, by “an incredible lushness and sense of harmony.”
Brentano String Quartet
Wednesday, March 31, 8:00 p.m., $18
Critics and audiences alike are enthralled by the Brentano String Quartet. “Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding” raves the London Independent, while The New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism.” Since winning the prestigious Naumburg Prize and the inaugural Cleveland Quartet Award in the mid-1990s, the Brentano has been a fixture at cultural centers throughout the world.

All four players—violinists Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin, violist Misha Amory, and cellist Nina Lee—maintain busy musical careers as soloists and chamber music collaborators, favored by such artists as Mitsuko Uchida, Jessye Norman, and Richard Goode.

As pioneers in adventurous programming, they bring to the Williams Center the brand new Night Songs for a Desert Flower by Stephen Hartke (whose Brandenburg Autumn was premiered at Lafayette by Orpheus in 2007), set between two of Franz Schubert’s most enduring works—the gem-like Quartetsatz and the towering G Major Quartet.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra with violinist Ryu Goto
Monday, May 3, 8:00 p.m., $29
Young Japanese-American sensation Ryu Goto joins Orpheus to perform Max Bruch’s soulful and expressive Violin Concerto, a masterpiece of the German Romantic period. Hear and see why all of Japan is enthralled with the musical charm of this 21-year-old phenom. Bruch’s Romantic fire combines with the classical brilliance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2, with the orchestra at full throttle, and Igor Stravinsky’s whimsical and inventive Octet, featuring the splendid ensemble of Orpheus’s winds and brass.

WDIY 88.1 FM, Lehigh ValleyWDIY Community Public Radio, is our media partner for this concert.

last updated July 22, 2009

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