From High Baroque to village dances, South American indigenous flavors and ethereal liturgical music, and from the jig to the tango—a program bridging worlds that grew out of common ground. Composers include Bach, Villa Lobos, Monteverdi, Handel, Couperin, Rameau and Vivaldi. Featured artists:
In this performance at The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, first oboist of the New York Philharmonic Liang Wang leads the way from Mozart’s Oboe Quartet to Cimarosa’s Oboe Concerto and Britten’s Metamorphosis. Tchaikovsky Competition winner, violinist Itamar Zorman, violinist Susan Heerema, violist Michael Strauss and Yehuda Hanani perform the Beethoven String Trio in C minor, written in his dramatic, misterioso key.
Some of the most astounding keyboard music ever written, Chopin’s Four Scherzi receive a masterful performance by the most recent Cliburn laureate (“superbly assured pianism” – BBC Music) Yekwon Sunwoo. He is joined by violinist Daniel Phillips, violist Daniel Panner and cellist Yehuda Hanani for Brahms’s epic Piano Quartet Opus 25 in G minor with its intoxicating Gypsy finale.
Paul Schoenfield’s runaway classical hit, Café Music for piano trio, sets the tone for our celebratory re-opening. Combining elements of classical, jazz, klezmer and whimsy, Café Music is caffeine-fueled and irresistible. Claude Bolling’s musings in the Suite for Cello and Jazz Trio offer up interpolations of boogie-woogie and ragtime with Baroque underpinnings. Gershwin is represented with his Three Preludes for Piano. With a benediction from Beethoven (his Romance No. 2 in F Major for Violin and Piano) and a cameo appearance by Christylez Bacon, the first Hip-Hop artist to be featured at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and with commissions by the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian Institute, the season is launched.
