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Week 1 – July 13 & 14
Elley-Long Music Center/Hardwick Town House
Our first program begins in the Renaissance with music of lutenist and composer John Dowland and then veers toward the neo-Baroque with Kenji Bunch’s 2017 composition for string quartet, entitled Apocryphal Dances—a work he describes as “a love letter to the 18th and 19th centuries.” Robert Beaser’s Mountain Songs for flute and guitar rounds out the first half with variations of folk melodies that harken back to the Renaissance lute tradition heard in Dowland’s work.
Our musical journey then takes us to 1785, with Mozart’s wonderful Quartet for piano and strings in g minor. This piece is considered the first major work for an ensemble consisting of violin, viola, cello and piano. Heard here in the context of olden styles, its cutting-edge ‘newness’ is apparent.
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| | July 20 & 21
Elley-Long Music Center/Hardwick Town House
Our second concert comprises bold pieces by very familiar composers, and yet they are new, or almost new, to the CCP stage. We keep an ongoing record of music we have performed and are currently at 879 works over the past 53 years (this does not count repeat performances)! The Beethoven duo that starts the concert was done once in 2000 in the off season. The Schubert violin fantasy has not been played here since 1975, and the Grieg quartet has never been programmed here. Perhaps the theme of this concert should be “It’s about time!”
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| | July 27 & 28 – Elley-Long Music Center/Hardwick Town House
This concert celebrates the artistry of composers who reach for the heights of instrumental virtuosity. The opening work, Sergei Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 1 in f minor, Op 80 for violin and piano, was begun in 1938 and set aside until 1946. It took some pressure from the great violinist David Oistrackh to get Prokofiev to complete the work. Oistrackh’s virtuosity certainly informed Prokofiev’s work creating this most challenging violin piece.
Anton Kraft was the cellist for whom Haydn wrote his virtuoso second cello concerto in D major. He studied composition with Haydn while working for him as a cellist in the Esterházy orchestra. Later in his career, Kraft was a member of the string quartet which premiered many of Beethoven’s quartets. He composed a handful of works which featured the cello including the Adagio and Rondo for 2 cellos we feature on this concert.
Felix Mendelssohn’s Piano trio No. 2 in c minor, opus 66 has been a fixture in the standard trio literature since it was finished in 1845. It highlights the composer’s virtuosity on two fronts; the brilliant piano writing and the masterfully woven counterpoint utilized throughout the music. | Buy Tickets |
| | August 3 & 4
Elley-Long Music Center/Hardwick Town House
When we talk about Italian musical masters, we immediately conjure names we know from the world of opera. This glorious and wildly popular theatrical tradition was the path to fame and security for so many gifted musicians, but there has always been much other music going on in Italy as well. The fourth concert brings forward two Italian composers with whom you may not yet be familiar, but we are sure you will be happy to hear more from them.
To start the program, we have a cello sonata by Antonio Vivaldi, arguably the most popular Italian composer of all time. We are performing this piece with an accompaniment updated in the 1950s for the modern piano by Mario Dalapiccola, a 20th century Italian master of 12-tone music. His version keeps Vivaldi’s original bass line intact but weaves canons with the cello melody and adds the occasional ‘blue’ note. A string trio from 1950 by composer Mario Castelnuevo-Tedesco follows. He was a WWII refugee who made it safely to America and found employment as a film composer. Completing this concert is an epic quintet for piano and string quartet by conductor, composer, teacher and pianist Giovanni Sgambati, composed in 1866.
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| | August 10 & 11
First Baptist Church/Hardwick Town House
Our fifth concert of the series again features music of composers who are household names. Brahms’ gorgeous Sonata no. 3 in d minor for violin and piano begins the concert. The rest of the program features music by 2 of his heroes. Haydn’s Trio in C Major from 1797 is one of 45 works he created for this combination. Critics have always admired the great piano virtuosity of the pieces as well as Haydn’s interesting and adventurous harmonic writing. Shubert’s monumental String Quartet No. 15 in G major, D. 887 concludes the evening. Schubert wrote this music in ten days in June of 1826.
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| | August 17 & 18
First Baptist Church/Hardwick Town House
In what can only be considered an epic cosmic irony, Beethoven’s 250th birthday coincided with the onset of a global pandemic! To end the 2022 season, we belatedly celebrate the milestone with music composed during the most traumatic five years of Beethoven’s creative life: the onset and total descent into profound deafness. Looking back, knowing this history and the suffering that was to come, it is astonishing to hear the pure joy and delight in life that shines throughout these three pieces. The youngest work, the Clarinet Trio, opus 11, was composed in 1797 and is a wonderful romp by a composer just starting to make a name for himself. Its attraction for a public that relished woodwind chamber music would have been strong. The final movement’s use of a very popular song for a set of variations added to the immediate appeal. Work on the Septet, opus 20 began two years later. It, too, is upbeat and energetic—and became his most popular opus during his lifetime. The Violin Sonata, opus 30 no. 3, that starts the concert was completed in the summer of 1802, just a few months before Beethoven was to pen the famous (and never-delivered) letter to his brothers, frankly outlining the depths of his despair and suicidal thoughts as he faced the inevitability of total deafness. Once again, in the thick of this, Beethoven creates an untroubled and gay piece of music that has been variously dubbed the ‘Charmer’ and the ‘Champaign Sonata’.
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