On Sunday, July 15 at 7:00 pm, the Meeting House Chamber Music Festival will travel to a magnificent and exceptionally fitting venue in West Barnstable. Not only does the name “1717 Meetinghouse” echo the title of the festival itself, the building was constructed in the century when chamber music began its evolution into a distinct musical form. The program includes two piano quartets that are acknowledged masterpieces, plus an excellent early example and two 20thcentury pieces that demonstrate chamber music’s enduring relevance. On Monday, July 16 at 7:30 pm, the same program will be given at the festival’s principal venue, Church of the Holy Spirit, Orleans. Performing in this concert will be: cellist Bo Ericsson, violinist Heather Goodchild Wade, and violist Laura Manko Sahin, as well as the festival’s founder/artistic director/pianist Donald Enos. Tickets can be purchased at the door or reserved in advance by calling 508.896.3344 or emailing [email protected]. Tickets: $25 (under 18 free).
Artful programming by Donald Enos creates a musical bridge across the centuries.The program’s earliest composition is a Baroque period violin sonata by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, renowned as a composer to this day despite his untimely death in 1736 at age 26. A generation later, Mozart’s bright and genial Quartet in E Flat, K. 493 shows how this musical genius moved beyond the Baroque, giving each instrument an independent voice that responds to the other. The Romantic tragic/heroic energy of the Brahms Quartet in G minor shows how the chamber music form had fully evolved by the mid-19thcentury into "four rational people conversing,” as chamber music has come to be called. Swedish composer Lars-Erik Larsson and Turkish composer Necil Kazim Akses’ further expanded the chamber music form, adding 20thcentury techniques and sensibilities and creating an exciting, modern, and culturally rich conversation.
Meeting House Chamber Music Festival
The Meeting House Chamber Music Festival is the longest-running music festival on Cape Cod for a reason. This year's line-up once again includes an extraordinary mix of engaging music from different periods and countries around the world. And, as always, the festival features the finest local talent and additional top instrumentalists from the national and international stage. The season finale will be held on Monday, July 23 at 7:30 pm at Church of the Holy Spirit. To view the schedule for the entire season, as well as biographies of the artists, please visit http://www.meetinghousemusic.org.