There are many highlights to look forward to with the upcoming Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival. Every piece is a fantastic collaborative experience for the performers and yes, for the audience.
I’m exited to hear Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht (meaning Transfigured Night). Now, a lot of audience members hear the name Schoenberg, and what often comes to mind is very dissonant music. But Verklärte Nacht is an earlier work dating from just before the turn of the 20th Century. The piece is incredibly accessible. It is written in the ultra-romantic compositional style that is closer to Wagner than to later Schoenberg.
And the piece is not abstract either. It is based on a poem that tells the story of two lovers who are walking through the woods (it reminds me of that Dante metaphor of being “lost in dark woods”). The woman confides to her lover that the child she bears is not his own. But love transcends all, and by the end of the piece, the child is transfigured as the child of the couple.
And the music is a masterpiece. It begins with rich string sextet harmony, but we are later introduced to the dark and stormy soundscape representing being lost in the woods. My favorite moment occurs after the transfiguration: Schoenberg writes arpeggios in the first violin that sparkle with light. One can’t help but imagine the sky’s reassuring starlight above where these two lovers experienced their transfiguration.
Every piece at the Tucson Chamber Music Festival tells some type of compelling musical story. See you at the concerts March 17-24.
Ted Buchholz
Jean-Paul Bierny and Theodore Buchholz visited Leo Rich Theater to discuss the unique and exciting 2013 Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival.
Jean-Paul provides insight and information about the musicians and composers of the 2013 festival.
Video production by Bob Foster, MD.
A silent auction for two new works of art created by desert artist Randy Hansen will take place during the Winter Chamber Music Festival, Sunday, March 17 through Sunday, March 24.
Randy Hansen and Jean-Paul Bierny
The winning bidders will be announced at intermission during the last concert on Sunday, March 24. All bidding will be done on bid sheets at the concert. Click on an image for a higher resolution view.
Gnarly: survival in the desert creates it’s own beauty in this fallen cottonwood.
The large format photo impressionistic pieces are part of the artist’s Blackwolf Series, planned for utilization as a fund raising tool for select charities and non-profit organizations world wide.
What lies beyond: Behind the beauty and serenity of the desert there is mystery and the unknown.
Randy Hansen has been an award-winning professional artist for over 50 years, For two decades his focus has been the American desert. He has experienced the heightening of senses that occurs when one spends prolonged periods in the desert. How colors become intense, how one hears and feels the desert. He lives in Tucson, Arizona and his works are collected internationally. Randy can be reached by emailing him at spiritstoneaz@gmail.com
Thanks to Randy Hansen for his generous donation of his artwork. What an opportunity to hear outstanding chamber music surrounded by exceptional art.
AFCM’s program for commissioning new chamber music is unique in the world.
“A real gem in our American cultural scene. Unusual, inspired, and critical.”
(Miro Quartet)
“It’s a model for the country.”
(Denver Chamber Music Society)
We find outstanding composers and ask them to create a new work of chamber music. We arrange for the performing group that will do the world premiere. Our program is distinctive for the number of works that have been created and for their high quality, and unique because every work has been sponsored (paid for) by members of our audience. We invite the composers to come to town for the world premiere performance, and there is an opportunity for the audience to meet them.
Also unique is our commitment to sharing these new works with arts community worldwide. Complete audio recordings and recently videos of the premiere performances of all our commissions are online in the Commissioning section of our website. Google’s search engine ranking of our website for “chamber music commissioning” is a remarkable number 1.
Lowell Liebermann is one of America’s most frequently performed and recorded
living composers. Called by the New York Times “as much of a traditionalist as an
innovator.” Mr. Liebermann’s music is known for its technical command and audience
appeal. Having written over one hundred works in all genres, several of them have gone
on to become standard repertoire for their instruments, including his Sonata for Flute
and Piano, which has been recorded more than twenty times to date, and his Gargoyles
for Piano, which has been recorded fifteen times. Gargoyles was performed here by Joyce Lang during her February 7, 2010 Piano & Friends concert and was so well received that it immediately prompted two audience members to sponsor the commission of this new piano trio.
Hailed “The most exciting piano trio in America” by The New Yorker Magazine,
Trio Solisti celebrated their 10th Anniversary in the 2011-2012 season. The trio is composed of three brilliant instrumentalists – violinist Maria Bachmann, cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach and pianist Jon Klibonoff. One of America’s most notable critics, Terry Teachout of The Wall St. Journal proclaimed, “To my mind, Trio Solisti has now succeeded the Beaux Arts Trio as the outstanding chamber-music ensemble of its kind.”
Trio Solisti’s soulful and passionate performances are marked by soloistic virtuosity, electric energy, seamless ensemble playing, and thrilling abandon. These qualities have drawn high praise from such journals as The New York Times (“consistently brilliant”) and The Washington Post (“unrelenting passion and zealous abandon in a transcendent performance.”)
The Juilliard String Quartet performed Carter’s String Quartet No. 5 for us just 2 weeks ago.
From the New York Times, November 5, 2012:
The turning point in Mr. Carter’s style came in 1950, when a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Institute of Arts and Letters allowed him to leave a teaching post at Columbia University and spend a year in southern Arizona, outside Tucson. During that year in the Sonora Desert he wrote a single 45-minute work, his First String Quartet.
Recalling his desert sojourn, Mr. Carter said in a 1960 interview: “I had been waiting for just such an opportunity to give form to a number of novel ideas I had had over the previous years, and to work out in an extended composition the character, expression and logic these ideas seemed to demand. I felt that I was constantly pushing into an unexplored musical realm.”
Read the complete article here.
170 students from two branches of the Basis School converged on the Leo Rich Theater for a concert by the illustrious Juilliard String Quartet. They heard two late Beethoven String Quartets.
Here are some observations from the kids. One marveled at the synchronization of the musicians, another at the emotional range of the music.
From a 7th-grader in the band:
“The Juilliard String Quartet sounded really virtually perfect, almost like a recording. I was amazed how synchronized the musicians were through the changes of tempo, rhythm, crescendos and de crescendos. It must take enormous amount of practice and playing together to do this without a conductor.”
From a 6th-grader:
“All of the songs [sic] had very different moods. One would have a very joyful mood then it would go to a worry mood. Also it will be depressing and then be peaceful.”
