The season finale of the Meeting House Chamber Music Festival will be held on Monday, July 29, 7:30 pm at Church of the Holy Spirit in Orleans. Performing in this special celebratory concert will beKatie Lansdale, violin; Megan Koch, cello; and Donald Enos, piano. Tickets can be purchased at the door or reserved in advance by phone (508.896.3344) or email ([email protected]). Tickets: $25 (under 18 free). More information at http://meetinghousemusic.org.
The typical Festival concert presents a series of treats, each with its unique style of expression, ideas, and cultural foundations. The season’s festive finale will serve up even more than the customary amount of delectable fare. A centerpiece of the program will be the Divertimento in D, Hob.XI:113 by Joseph Haydn (Austrian, 1732-1809)—as joyous and entertaining a piece of music as exists in the repertoire. Entirely different in mood and bursting with folk flavor are works for solo violin by Antonín Dvořák (Czech, 1841-1904). Another featured composer who, like Dvořák, mastered the violin in early childhood and went on to write soaring music for it, is Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe(French-Belgian, 1858–1931). The passionate elegance of this “King of the Violin” comes through loud and clear in the “Les Furies” movement of his Violin Sonata No. 2.
And then there is the panache of AndréPrevin (b.1929), the German-American pianist and composer whose work has brought him four Academy Awards and eleven Grammys, including one for Lifetime Achievement. Previn wrote his beautiful Sonata for Cello and Piano for Yo-Yo Ma, and the piece was premiered by the world-renowned Chinese-American cellist in 1993. “Spring” from Astor Piazzolla’s The Four Seasons of Buenos Aires is fast, intense, and dramatic. Piazzolla (Argentine, 1921-1992) was the grand master of tango music and this piece is an exciting blend of traditional tango and classical and contemporary influences. Camille Saint-Saëns (French, 1835-1921) worked in many different styles and music formats during his long life, and chamber music was one of his early passions. His First Piano Trio is an exuberant, youthful, and at times even boisterous piece written when the composer was 28.