The Season at a Glance (or Two)

Now that summer is “officially” over, students are back to school and everybody's back from vacation (if not the vacation mind-set, just yet), it's time to be looking ahead to the New Season which gets underway soon enough. Even if the weather may be a bit confusing, there's the awareness that dates on the calendar are still closer than they appear: just walk into any store and see what's on display.

Market Square Concerts' 2014-2015 Season will begin at the end of September with the appearance of the most recent winner of Chamber Music America's “Cleveland Quartet Award,” the Ariel Quartet who'll be performing works by Beethoven, Ravel and Ernő Dohnányi with pianist Orion Weiss at Market Square Church on Saturday, September 27th at 8pm. Dick Strawser offers a pre-concert talk at 7:15, marking the centenary of the start of World War I. Dohnányi's Piano Quintet No. 2, written in 1914, in its own way encapsulates the history and music of the time, before anyone knew what would become a World War became “The War to End All Wars” but wouldn't...

Orion Weiss

One of Beethoven's early quartets – Op. 18, No. 2 – was first heard in 1800 when Europe was on the verge of decades of continent-wide warfare during the Napoleonic Age. With Ravel's Quartet, premiered in 1904, this concert brings into play some musical changes going on around times of great historical turmoil.

Members of the quartet talk about their early involvement with the Jerusalem Music Center where they began their career as an ensemble


and here, from January 2014, they perform the conclusion of Beethoven's “Serioso” Quartet.


Orion Weiss, named the Classical Recording Foundation’s Young Artist of the Year in 2010, has performed with major American orchestras (including a last-minute sub for Leon Fleisher with the Boston Symphony) and has a busy schedule of solo recitals and chamber music programs. Here's an excerpt from Beethoven's 4th Piano Concerto recorded live this past July.


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Avalon Quartet

In November, the Avalon String Quartet brings Schumann and Tchaikovsky to Market Square Church on Saturday, the 15th, at 8pm.

Cellist Cheng-Hou Lee will be returning to Harrisburg for this program, following July's “Summermusic” festival when he joined Peter Sirotin, Ya-Ting Chang and members of the ensemble to play works by Mozart and Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann. You can hear some of those performances at the MSC YouTube Channel, here. 

One of the clips I found on-line features the slow movement from Ernő Dohnányi Piano Quintet No. 1 (written about two decades before the 2nd Quintet you can hear on the September concert).

Here, they perform the scherzo from Bedrich Smetana's E Minor String Quartet (“From My Life”)
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Their Market Square concert will include the last of Robert Schumann's three quartets and the first of Tchaikovsky's three quartets, best know for its Andante cantabile which has taken on a life of its own.

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Kristóf Baráti

For the first concert of the new year, we move uptown to the Temple Ohev Sholom for a program of music for solo violin with Kristóf Baráti. He'll be playing sonatas by Eugene Ysaÿe and Bela Bartók and Bach's monumental D Minor Partita on Tuesday, January 20th at 8pm, the night before his Carnegie Hall debut ("practice, practice, practice").

Barati offers the first movement, “Obsession,” from Ysaÿe's 2nd Sonata, here, as an encore, 


but he'll play the whole sonata for us - actually, two whole sonatas by Ysaÿe - the 2nd and 3rd. While Bach's Solo Sonatas and Partitas are familiar to most concert-goers – especially the “Chaconne” from the partita Barati performs on this program – Bartók's sonata, one of his late works, is not that well-known. Quite frankly, just looking at this program makes it clear Barati likes a good challenge. At least, with a pianist, he'd have a chance to catch his breath once in a while...

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Trio Solisti - Jon Manasse

The following month, Market Square Concerts will help the Rose Lehrman Arts Center at Harrisburg Area Community College celebrate its 40th Anniversary with the return of Trio Solisti joined by clarinetist Jon Manasse on Saturday, February 28th at 8pm for works by Turina, Poulenc and Milhaud, as well as Piazzolla and Gershwin.

Trio Solisti has been a regular visitor with Market Square Concerts over the years and, as happens often enough in many longer-lived ensembles, there will be personnel changes. Adam Neimann recently joined the ensemble as pianist. 

Here's the driven “scherzo” from Dmitri Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Trio with the latest download of Trio Solisti.


In Harrisburg, they'll play Joaquin Turina's B Minor Piano Trio and Piazzolla's “Four Seasons.”

In this audio clip, clarinetist Jon Manasse plays Weber's Concertino in E-flat.


He'll join members of the Trio for the Poulenc Clarinet Sonata, Milhaud's “Suite” for Violin, Clarinet and Piano, and to wrap up the program, some Gershwin songs.

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Donald Sinta Quartet

Something a little different comes along with the Donald Sinta Quartet at Whitaker Center on Saturday, March 28th at 8pm when this saxophone quartet plays great string quartets by Dvořák, Shostakovich, Barber plus Grieg's Holberg Suite, a program they call “No Strings Attached.”

Named for their mentor, the legendary saxophonist and teacher, they formed in 2010 and have quickly made a name for themselves in this country and abroad (for instance, a 2011 tour of China).

Here, they perform the opening movement of one of the staples of any saxophone quartet's repertoire, the quartet Alexander Glazunov composed in 1931.



But like many ensembles with relatively limited programming options – considering the great composers of the 19th Century didn't have saxophone quartets to compose for – they often covet other people's repertoire. And so they'll borrow Dvořák's “American” Quartet and Shostakovich's Cold War era 8th String Quartet as well as the Adagio (for Strings) originally from Samuel Barber's Op. 11 Quartet and Grieg's nostalgic look back in the history of Scandinavian art with his “Suite from Holberg's Time.”

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Amernet Quartet

The Amernet String Quartet offers the final concert of the main subscription series on Saturday, April 25th at 8pm at Temple Ohev Sholom with a powerful program of quartets by Mendelssohn, Schulhof, Shostakovich and Weinberg. Dr. Truman Bullard offers a pre-concert talk at 7:15 about a program that observes the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War II.

In 1941, Erwin Schulhoff was deported to the concentration camp at Wurzberg where he died the following year. Mieczysław Weinberg, born in Warsaw and fleeing to the Soviet Union following the Nazi invasion (he lost most of his family in the Holocaust), became a protege of Shostakovich's. While Shostakovich's 4th Quartet on this program was composed in 1949 in the on-going aftermath of the war and of Stalin's repressive regime, Weinberg's 5th Quartet was composed in 1945 at the end of the war.

Mendelssohn's music, technically, was also a victim of World War II, banned by the Nazis because of the composer's Jewish birth. In this clip, after introducing the quartet's instruments, the Amernet perform a movement from Mendelssohn's Quartet Op. 44 No. 2 (they'll play the third quartet of the set at Temple Ohev Sholom).


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Season subscriptions are available at $190 for the full season (seniors $170) or a "Take 3" Pass at $100.

Single tickets are $35, seniors $30, students $5 for all concerts.

Free Admission for students K-12 and $5 for one accompanying parent, sibling or teacher. Group rates are available for groups larger than 10 people.

Tickets may be purchased on-line at Market Square Concerts' website, at THE BOX in person, by phone at 717 221-9599 and 717 214-ARTS or online at whitakercenter.org or email drichter@marketsquareconcerts.org. Remaining tickets will be available at the door.

And then, before you know it, it will be time to get ready for Summermusic 2015 - but we'll tell you about that later in the season.

- Dick Strawser

Getting Ready for the New Season

Summer is over – officially, as of Tuesday, Sept. 22nd at 5:18pm – and that means the New Season is about to begin.

It may seem far away before you turn the page on the calendar but if time is marching ever faster for you, then you should know the 2009-2010 Season at Market Square Concert begins in a just a couple of weeks.

SUNDAY, OCT. 11th, 2009, at 4pm, Whitaker Center

The New York Times called the Parker String Quartet “something extraordinary,” The Boston Globe hailed its “fiercely committed performances” and The Washington Post declared it “a quartet that deserves close attention.” Earlier this year, they were awarded the Cleveland Quartet Competition Award.

They're playing a program of “early” quartets by Beethoven, Bartok and Mendelssohn.

Beethoven's String Quartet in D, Op. 18, No. 3, was actually the first he completed of the Op. 18 set (it just got published in a different order). It sounds like it's rooted in the past generations' masters – Haydn and Mozart – but may not seem to indicate (at least on the surface) the quartets Beethoven would write twenty years later.

Bartok's first quartet doesn't sound very close stylistically to the quartets he'd write twenty years later, either. It's nominally in A Minor and when he was writing it (mostly in 1908), he had just discovered two things: the music of Claude Debussy and the authentic folk-music of ethnic Hungarians. Both gave him a kind of creative release from the omnipresent Germanic style that was officially sanctioned in Imperial Vienna and provincial Budapest. Still, many passages seem to spring right from some of Beethoven's last quartets, especially the C-sharp Minor, Op.131. Meanwhile, in his personal life at this time, there was his unrequited love for a beautiful violinist named Stefi Geyer to whom he also dedicated a violin concerto he later suppressed.

Mendelssohn – born 200 years ago – was also much influenced by the late quartets of Beethoven who had just died a few months before Mendelssohn wrote his first “mature” quartet. Beethoven's music was still quite contemporary (in fact, Mendelssohn's father couldn't stand Beethoven's music) and it was Beethoven's A Minor Quartet, Op. 127, that served as the catalyst for Mendelssohn's A Minor Quartet, his Op. 13. Just as Beethoven had begun his last quartet's finale with a question (Must it be?), Mendelssohn quoted a song he'd written a few months earlier with its own questioning motive: “Is it true?” There are also passages that clearly indicate he'd been studying the “Serioso” Quartet, Beethoven's Op. 95, as well. This is really the 1st of the published quartets he'd composed but the second got to the publishers first, so it's officially String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13..

Though these are considered “early” quartets, Beethoven was pushing 30 when he worked on the six quartets of Op. 18. Bartok was 27. Mendelssohn, on the other hand, was all of 18.

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TUESDAY NOV. 17th, 2009 at 8pm, Whitaker Center

There's Mendelssohn on the second concert with cellist Zuill Bailey and pianist Robert Koenig, the second of his cello sonatas, composed at the ripe old age of 34. Also on the program is one of Igor Stravinsky's backward glances, the Suite Italienne which is based on music from the ballet, Pulcinella, much of which incorporates music he thought was by the Barqoue composer, Pergolesi. Brahms also wrote two cello sonatas, and his 2nd Sonata in F Major concludes the program.

Zuill Bailey may be familiar to Central Pennsylvania audiences who've heard his recordings on WITF-FM or having seen him in some of the Next Generation Festivals of years past with Awadagin Pratt and friends. The San Francisco Sentinel described him as a “triple threat of gifts of splendid virtuosity, elegant technique and theatrical flair. The Chicago Tribune says his playing “bristles with rare virtuosic flare.”

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SATURDAY, JANUARY 23rd, 2010 at 8pm, Temple Ohev Sholom, Harrisburg

Midstaters first heard the Cypress Quartet during their very first season together when they also appeared with Awadagin Pratt at the very first Next Generation Festival. Since then, they've been back numerous times with recitals throughout the region, including a regular residency at Lebanon Valley College and, just this past summer, with the Pennsylvania Academy of Music in Lancaster.

This year, they'll be bringing us a recent work composed specifically for them by Jennifer Higdon, a Philadelphia-based composer whose music may also be familiar to midstaters from performances with the Harrisburg Symphony (her Blue Cathedral and the Percussion Concerto) and the Lancaster Symphony (river sings a song to trees, from “CityScape”). Ms. Higdon will be in Harrisburg for this performance and will also be involved in an educational program in the city schools.

Her string quartet “Impressions” (which they've recorded for Naxos) was composed as a response to one of the great works of the “Impressionist” era, Claude Debussy's String Quartet which is also on the program. Higdon's work includes movements entitled “Bright Palette,” “Quiet Art,” “To the Point” and “Noted Canvas.” You'll get a chance to hear a Live Composer talk about the creative process not only in terms of Debussy's work as a starting point but also the ideas of transforming a painting style into music.

The performance also includes the String Quartet by West Chester native, Samuel Barber, a work perhaps better known as the home of the original version of the Adagio for Strings.

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SATURDAY, FEB. 28th, 2010, 8pm, Market Square Church

While they may not be your grandmother's string quartet, the Brooklyn Rider was “born out of a desire to use the rich medium of the string quartet as a vehicle for borderless communication,” whether they're performing in traditional concert venues or not (like Joe's Pub or a temple in Japan). Their innovative programming spans the new and unusual to the standard. Not surprising since some of the musicians have been involved with Yo-Yo Ma's cross-cultural Silk Road Ensemble.

On this program, they'll mix Schubert's great “Death & the Maiden” Quartet with works by Philip Glass (whose Violin Sonata was given its World Premiere last season with Market Square Concerts) and two Silk Road colleagues, Colin Jacobsen and Dmitri Yanov-Yanovksy. Also featured will be a Market Square Concerts commission, a work that is being written “as we speak” - meaning it will be “hot-off-the-press” at its world premiere on this concert, a brand new work by composer and soprano Lisa Bielawa who'll perform it with the quartet. (You can read more about the background of this new work in a previous post.)

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WEDNESDAY MARCH 24th, 2010, 8pm, Whitaker Center

Flutist Claire Chase, winner of the 2008 Concert Artists Guild International Competition, brings an eclectic program to the March concert with music ranging from Bach and Schumann to Debussy and Boulez. There are original works as well as transcriptions. While hearing Schumann's 3 Romances on the flute instead of the oboe is not much of a stretch, hearing Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D Minor played by solo flute (even amplified) might be. We know it as an organ work – and, officially, it might not even be originally by Bach – but apparently it was originally a work for solo violin, so this performance might give us an idea of a familiar work's unfamiliar beginnings!

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SATURDAY, APRIL 24th, 2010, 8pm, Market Square Church

Having traveled through familiar 19th & 20th Century repertoire to music of the 21st Century (including a piece that hasn't even been finished yet), the season ends with a trip back to Elizabethan times with the timeless poetry of William Shakespeare and John Dunne and music by their contemporaries with a group the New Yorker Magazine called “one of the brightest lights in New York's early music scene,” Parthenia. They'll be joined by actor Paul Hecht and soprano Jacqueline Horner for this program, on the date usually considered Shakespeare's Birthday. So come and join the party!

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Check out the website or call 717 221-9599 for details, especially about tickets. And keep in tune with us on Facebook.

Thanks to the Season Sponsor, Capital Blue Cross.

- Dr. Dick