Meeting House Chamber Music Festival to Present “American Landscape”

On Monday, July 10 at 7:30 PM, the Meeting House Chamber Music Festival will take its audience on an exhilarating tour of American music culminating in a Broadway-themed premiere. Artistic Director Donald Enos is known for drawing inspiration from diverse cultures and historical periods and he and his longtime collaborator, the renowned cellist Amit Peled, have upped the ante once again. This “American Landscape” concert will feature American composers George Gershwin, Florence Price, Aaron Copland, Samuel Barber, and Victor Herbert. The premiere of “Broadway Famous Themes arranged for cello and piano”—a delightful piece by Israeli cellist/composer Guy Eylon—will complete the musical tour. All festival concerts are presented at Church of the Holy Spirit, Orleans. Tickets are $25 at the door (under 18 free). After the July 10 concert, the fourth of the season, the festival will continue for two more Mondays: July 17 and 24. Additional festival information can be found at http://www.meetinghousemusic.org

 

Musical ideas migrate, cross-pollinate, and evolve into new forms and styles over time and the upcoming program uses American music as a shining example. Gershwin’s Three Preludes is a fitting start for the journey as it exemplifies the influence of jazz on early-20th-century American classical music. Next up is a piece by Florence B. Price, the first black woman in the U.S. to be recognized as a symphonic composer. Price’s gorgeous adagio from her Concerto in One Movement has a lyrical theme in the classical European tradition withstrains of African American folk. In the tradition of spirituals combining European religious elements with African music forms, the spiritual “Motherless Child” dates back to the era of slavery and expresses the suffering and intermittent despair of a child torn from her parents and a people separated from its motherland. 

 

Samuel Barber’s Sonata for Cello and Piano, written by this American composer as he traveled in Europe, is profound and passionate in the manner of the great European romantic composers such as Brahms. Aaron Copland’s Waltz and Celebration incorporates several cowboy tunes and American folk songs and evokes the pioneer West with its colorful characters like Billy the Kid. Victor Herbert’s Concerto number 2 is another stunning example of how musical ideas migrate. This moving piece gives hints of the musical interchange between Herbert and Dvořák, colleagues at New York's National Conservatory in the early 1890s. While Herbert inspired Dvořák to write a cello concerto himself, this concerto bears the imprint of Dvorak’s music and, in particular, the Symphony from the New World. And finally, the audience will be treated to Guy Eylon’s new piece, a tribute to the quintessentially American genre, the Broadway musical!

 

The Meeting House Chamber Music Festival is grateful for the generous support of the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cape Cod 5, and the Mary Louise and Ruth N. Eddy Foundation.

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[Janet Murphy Robertson]

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