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2007-2008 Season Concerts and Events
Three Series to Enjoy:
- 1. Musical Club Concerts
- 2. Two Musical Exploration Programs
- 3. Plus, A Hartford Piano Society Recital
At Westminster Presbyterian Church, 2080 Boulevard, West Hartford, except as noted. Where highlighted, you can click on these events to find more information.
1. Musical Club Concerts
Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008 LEONID SIGAL, VIOLIN,
10:00 a.m. Admission $8, students/members free. (Click on link for biographical
information.)
Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008 WINNERS OF THE MUSICAL CLUB HIGH SCHOOL COMPETITION, 2:00 p.m. Admission free. Click on Competition Winners for details.
Thursday, Apr. 24, 2008 CAPPELLA CLAUSURA, 10:00 a.m. Admission $8, students/members free. (Click on link for a short article on their work.)
2. Musical Exploration Programs
Thursday, November 8, 2007, at 10 a.m. DUO DEL SUR: "A Journey Through Latin-American Rhythms." Admission $5, students/members free. Chair: Susan Mardinly.
Thursday, March 6, 2008, at 10 a.m. MUSICAL EXPLORATION: THE EVOLUTION OF KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS. Admission $5, students/members free.Chair: Janet Eveleth.
3. Hartford Piano Society Events - Just
announced for 2007
(For details select Hartford Piano
Society from menu to the left, or click on the highlighted name.)
ALEXANDER KOBRIN, piano recital
Concert Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 7 p.m.
Program Haydn Sonata in c minor, Hob. 616; Beethoven Sonata in E-flat
major, Op. 7, #4; Chopin Impromptus #1-4; Rachmaninoff Sonata #2.
Millard Auditorium, Hartt School,
University of Hartford, 200 Bloomfield Avenue, West Hartford. Admission: adults,
$15, seniors/students, $10, special rate for groups of 10 or more, $8 per
person.
Master Class Monday, October 1 at 10 a.m. Millard Auditorium, University of Hartford. The Master Class is sponsored by the Musical Club of Hartford through the Evelyn Bonar Storrs Fund and admission is free.
Ticket information: Tickets at the door or call University of Hartford Box Office, 860-768-4228 or 1-800-274-8587, www.Hartford.edu/Hartt. Open seating: please arrive early. Admission: adults, $15, seniors/students, $10, special rate for groups of 10 or more, $8 per person. For further information call the Piano Society, 561-2420. The Master Class, supported by the Musical Club of Hartford, is free.
Other concerts will be announced here as information becomes available.
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Program details will be added as they become available.
1. Musical Club Concerts
LEONID SIGAL, VIOLIN, Thursday, Jan. 10, 2008,10:00 a.m.
Presently Concertmaster of the Hartford Symphony, Leonid Sigal has enjoyed a multi-faceted career as recitalist, chamber musician and orchestra leader. Since his early performances he was praised by audiences and critics for his virtuosity and musical sensitivity. The Miami Herald wrote: "Sigal demonstrated what a fine violinist he is, playing passionately and cleanly with a soaring tone." TheHartford Courant echoes: ". . .his tone was consistently sweet. He brought a clear sense of phrasing, articulation and effortless virtuosity.
Born in Moscow, he began violin studies with his father at the age 5, and a year later was accepted to the renowned Gnessin School of Music. He attended and graduated with excellence from the Moscow Conservatory. He has also studied with Isaac Stern, Sir Yehudi Menuhin, Pinchas Zukerman, and Erick Friedman.
Winner of several national competitions, he received the 1993 Algur H. Meadows Artistic Scholarship Award and subsequently moved to the US, where in 1995 he was invited by Michael Tilson Thomas to join the New World Symphony. While Concertmaster, he was also coached as a conductor by Mr. Thomas.
Mr. Sigal’s experience includes recitals, chamber music and orchestral appearances in the US, Canada, Italy, Germany, France, Russia, UK, Austria, Switzerland, Japan and South Korea. He has performed with such world renowned maestros as Sir Georg Solti, Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, Christoph Eshenbach. Among festivals at which he has performed are Rencontres Musicales d’Evian, Schwetzingen Festival, as well as festivals in Prague, Tokyo, Seoul and Miami.
A dedicated chamber musician, Mr. Sigal has collaborated with Mstislav Rostropovich, Evgeny Kissin, Edgar Meyer and Joseph Silverstein among others. Recent highlights include the Shostakovich Piano Quintet with James Ehnes, Roberto and Andres Diaz and Valentina Lisitsa, as well as the complete Brahms Sonatas with pianist Vanessa Perez. He appears with the Miami Friends of Chamber Music and is a frequent guest with the Avery Ensemble.
Previously Associate Concertmaster of the Florida Philharmonic, he had also performed with San Diego Symphony. From 2001 to 2004 he served as Artistic Director of the Miami Chamber Symphony.
In addition to serving as Concertmaster of the Florida’s Atlantic Classical Orchestra, Mr. Sigal teaches at The Hartt School. (Information from the Hartt School website.)
Cappella Clausura, Thursday, April 24, 2008,
10:00 a.m.
The Ensemble is directed by Amelia LeClair. Instrumentalists are Mai-Lan Broekman, gamba and violone; Hendrik Broekman, organ and harpsichord; James Meadors, lute and theorbo. The full list of vocalists includes Allegra Martin, Anna Maria Dwyer, Carolyn Mapes, and Susan Ward, altos; Janet Poisson, Jeanne Lucas, Kimberly Soby, Leah Krznarich, Margaret Felice, Sharon Kelley, and Sipra Agrawal, sopranos; and Janna Frelich and Laura Betinis, mezzo-sopranos.
Their website, clausura.org, includes the following interesting essay:
CAPPELLA Clausura is a women’s ensemble in Boston which specializes in the music written through the centuries by women in clausurae, that is, in the cloisters. We bring to light works by composers who have struggled to answer the call of the Muse despite considerable and often crippling social taboos, who, in short, composed music for the pure and overwhelming love of it.
The music that was written in clausura was
extraordinary in its inventiveness as well as its musicality. The nuns who
penned it were writing to express their deepest spirituality at a time when
musical expression by women was not only frowned upon but frequently forbidden
by the church. Until quite recently most of this rich cultural heritage lay
dormant in the recesses of Italian monastic libraries, despite the fact that, in
its day, it was published for its very consistent and faithful audience outside
the cloister walls... this music is now becoming available again to the public.
The Italian seicento (17th century) was a phenomenon. Monasteries for women in
Italy were largely populated by the daughters of the privileged whose families
offered these institutions huge dowries to provide room and board and de facto
life imprisonment. For a number of reasons, among them the highly competitive
and rising cost of dowries and the popularity of marriage among gentlemen to
women of lower classes (not a suitable option for women), there was an explosion
of women living in clausura: in fact, a majority of patrician daughters went
into the convents rather than into marriage. The church, in its infinite wisdom,
taught these women to read so that they could perform daily worship. With the
help of an occasionally sympathetic local church leader many of these nuns,
taking advantage of the best education to be had for females, became excellent
musicians (music teachers were either men considered past lasciviousness, who
nevertheless, as a precaution, taught from the other side of the screed, or the
nuns themselves). The musical abilities within the convents were a great source
of pride for their townsfolk.
In fact local patricians so enjoyed female monastic music that several nuns
became quite famous. Prominent critics wrote extensively about them, and of the
quality of their singing and compositions. Individual nuns gained reputations as
excellent singers, violinists, luthiers, trombonists, and most importantly,
composers.
Northern Italian monasteries for women were built to include a chiesa interiore,
in which the nuns would conduct services, and a chiesa exteriore, a larger
section attached to the wall and connected by a hole through which sound could
travel but no individual could be seen. Despite this apparent sanction of
audience participation, the Church set strict rules against nuns’ performing
for the public, and frequently sent out edicts to forbid music in their services
– a good indication that the performances continued despite all restrictions.
Often a monastery’s instruments or male teachers were removed from the
premises, leaving the imprisoned residents to their own best devices.
All this contributed to the most remarkable and unique characteristic of the
sisters’ compositions: since they were written to be performed in a fickle
Church climate in which Rome might at any time enforce its ban on music, meaning
instruments might be available one day and removed from the convent the next,
the music had to work no matter what octave the bass line was in. While there
were, apparently, women who could sing quite low, the bass and tenor parts were
frequently raised up an octave and doubled by the cellist, or trombonist, if
there was one. If there wasn’t, the bass and tenor parts might become alto and
soprano parts, or the whole work might be transposed to accommodate the voices
and instruments on hand.
2. Musical Exploration Programs
Duo Del Sur, November 8, 2007
This Lecture/Recital features Gonzalo Cortés, flutist and Gabriel Löfvall, pianist, communicating the poetry and expressiveness of Latin American music through a mixture of traditional repertoire for flute and piano and native instruments. Energetic and fun-filled spoken musical commentary will guide the listener through the colorful map of South American music, bringing out its richness and color beginning with native panpipes and tangos and continuing through Ginastera' solo piano music and little-known 20th century selections. Gonzalo Cortés, a native of Chile, was Principal Fliute with the Classical Orchestra of Santiago and has toured South America with various orchestras. He has recorded with the internationallyi acclaimed Chilean folk group Inti-Illimani, Ariel Ramírez's Misa Criolla for Naxos. Mr. Cortés teaches flute at Miss Porter's School. Gabriel Löfvall has toured South America as piano soloist and with chamber ensembles. He is currently Director of Music for Church Street Singers and St. Patrick's Church in Farmington.
3. Hartford Piano Society Recital and
Master Class
Alexander Kobrin, September 30/October 1, 2007
Born in Moscow in 1980, Alexander Kobrin completed his studies in at the Gnessin Academy of Music under Tatiana Zelikman and at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory under Lev Naumov, where he received his master's degree. At the age of twenty-five, Mr. Kobrin was awarded the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Gold Medal at the Twelfth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition (2005). Along with the medal, he received three years of international concert engagements coordinated by the Cliburn and IMG Artists (Europe) and a compact disc recording of his award-winning Cliburn Competition performances for the harmonia mundi usa label. First-prize winner of the 1999 Busoni Competition and a top prizewinner of both the 2000 Chopin and 2003 Hamamatsu Competitions, Alexander Kobrin has toured extensively throughout Europe, South America, and Asia. He has performed with the Moscow Virtuosi, the Orchestra Verdi di Milano, Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, Virtuosi of Salzburg Chamber Orchestra, Moscow State Symphony Orchestra, Rio de Janeiro Symphonic Orchestra, English Chamber Orchestra, and the Osaka and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras. During the 2005-2006 concert season, Mr. Kobrin's first as a Cliburn gold medalist, he performed with the Eugene, Pacific, and Utah Symphony Orchestras and with the Fort Wayne and Rochester Philharmonic Orchestras among others. His 2006-2007 began with his New York Philharmonic debut at Lincoln Center in July, and included performances in Colorado, at Clandeboye Festival (Ireland), and the Tuscan Sun Festival in Italy, where he was joined by violinist Nikolai Znaider and baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Other appearances will take place in Dallas, Nashville, Phoenix, San Antonio, Syracuse and Hartford, as well as with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic and Moscow State Symphony. In November, he returns to Japan where he will perform and record a new CD. In addition to the Cliburn Competition disc for harmonia mundi, including works by Brahms and Rachmaninoff, Mr. Kobrin has started a recording project devoted to Chopin for the King label; two discs have been released to date. He is also prominently featured in In the Heart of Music, the film documentary about the Twelfth Cliburn Competition, which premiered on PBS stations across the United States in the fall of 2005. When Alexander Kobrin is not performing, he teaches at the Moscow State Gnessin Academy of Music. For more information about Mr. Kobrin's upcoming activities or the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, please visit www.cliburn.org.
(The preceding information was supplied by the Van Cliburn International Foundation.)
3. Musical Exploration Programs