2011-12 Harrisburg Concert Series
Friday, November 18th, 2011 at 8 p.m.
Gideon Klein: String Trio (1944)
Gabriel Fauré: String Quartet No. 2 in G Minor, Op.45
Friday, February 3rd, 2012 at 8 p.m.
Jonathan Leshnoff: New Work
Bèla Bartók: Contrasts for clarinet, violin and piano, Sz. 111, BB. 116
Brahms: Piano Quartet in A Major, Op. 26
Friday, March 16th, 2012 at 8 p.m.
Schulhoff: String Sextet
Gabriela Lena Frank: Hypnagogia (commissioned by Concertante)
Mendelssohn: String Quintet in B-flat Major, Op. 87
Friday, May 4th, 2012 at 8 p.m.
Mozart: String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 174
Shulamit Ran: String Sextet
Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) for string sextet, Op. 4
The highly acclaimed string ensemble Concertante presents its first concert in its Harrisburg series on Friday evening, September 9th at 7:30 p.m. All concerts in the Harrisburg series are held at the Rose Lehrman Arts Center,1 HACC Drive,Harrisburg,PA. The complete program follows:
Beethoven: String Trio in C Minor, Op. 9, No. 3
Brahms: Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet in B Minor, Op. 115
Single tickets are $20 ($15 for seniors and $10 for students) and are available by calling 717-780-2545 or online at www.hacc.edu/rlac.
For 2011-12 Concertante also announces a new Executive Director: Rachel Shapiro; new Artistic Director: Xiao-Dong Wang; and new Administrative Director: Keisha Mason. This season the group will feature some old and new faces as Concertante enters its 15th anniversary season. For more information about the ensemble please visit www.concertante.org.
After more than fifteen years before the public, Concertante has established itself as a chamber ensemble that combines in equal measure world class virtuosity and an adventurous willingness to explore and enhance the sextet repertoire. Comprised of a core of six virtuoso string players, the group performs in varied combinations of instrumentalists in a wide array of repertoire, ranging from works by established masters to less commonly performed composers. As solo performers who have won important national and international music competitions, they have appeared in such major venues asNew York’s Carnegie Hall,London’s Royal Festival Hall, andShanghai’s Grand Theatre.
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and numerous regional media outlets have found much to laud in Concertante’s performances. Writing for the December 2010 issue of The Strad, Dennis Rooney remarked:
The players delivered an eloquent and impressively played account in a concert shared with Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet K581…The Mozart was animated and free of any interpretative self indulgence. Sonorities blended pleasingly and the moods passed from serene to rollicking as the music demanded…Violinist Xiao-Dong Wang and cellist Alexis Pia Gerlach were extraordinarily secure in their unison harmonic in the middle section of the ‘Vocalise’, and pianist Xak Bjerken found the perfect tone for the composer’s frequently floating chordal accompaniments.
In the spring of 2010, Allan Kozinn reviewed the final concert in the One Plus Five commissioning project for The New York Times:
String quartets are the glamour ensembles in the chamber music world, but sextets are actually more natural. Far more than the top-heavy quartet, with its two violins offset by a single viola and a cello, a sextet offers perfect symmetry, balance and flexibility. The centerpiece of its program on Monday evening at Merkin Concert Hall was its latest acquisition, Richard Danielpour’s “Kaddish” (2009), an elegiac work that the composer described as a belated memorial to his father, who died in 1977. Mr. Danielpour’s language is consonant and instantly accessible; he is more inclined to seduce listeners than to challenge them. Ittai Shapira brought the solo violin writing to life with a sweet, plaintive tone and an almost narrative approach to phrasing….Concertante opened its program with Elgar’s Serenade for Strings (Op. 20), arranged for sextet by Ara Gregorian, one of the ensemble’s violists…. Concertante’s players produced a richly blended sound that, in a hall as small as Merkin, suggested the heft of the original. And there were benefits to putting the work on a diet: this version lets you hear details of Elgar’s plush harmonization that are overwhelmed in the standard edition. The ensemble closed its concert with a beautifully focused account of the Brahms String Sextet No. 1 in B flat. Its reading of the slow movement — an exquisite set of variations — was particularly magical. (May 19, 2010)
Out of town, the reviews have been just as favorable; “The focus and intensity brought to the music was breathtaking (Telegram & Gazette of Worcester, MA, January 26, 2009); “The musicians achieved such clear balance in the thick textures, phrased and breathed together as one, and kept perfect ensemble as they hurtled through the electrifying coda of Tchaikovsky’s “Souvenir de Florence.” (The Washington Post, October 10, 2008); “Again the Concertante members played with vibrant colors, warm sound and full understanding of how the music surges and recedes emotionally (Houston Chronicle, December 7, 2007) “Concertante applied remarkable charisma, cohesion and voluptuous sonorities to works on their varied program…The concert revealed the ensemble’s eclectic taste, as well as its adventurous spirit. (Cleveland Plain Dealer, March 23, 2007.)
For the 2011-12 season Concertante returns to perform its regular series inNew Yorkat Merkin Hall,Baltimoreat Bolton Street Synagogue, and inHarrisburg,PAat theRoseLehrmanArtsCenter, where it continues as Resident Chamber Music Ensemble. Committed since its inception to performing new music, the ensemble has performed the works of such noted contemporary composers as John Adams, Josef Bardanashvili, Justine Chen, Tina Davison, Steven R. Gerber, David Ludwig, Jan Radzynski, Sheila Silver, and Oded Zehavi. It has also offered infrequently performed chamber works by such celebrated composers as Enesco, John Adams, Schoenberg, Martinů, Korngold, andFrankBridge, among others.
Throughout its career, Concertante has been active in the recording studio and has received high critical praise for its CDs on the internationally distributedHeliconlabel. Its most recent recording for this label features Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s String Sextet in D Major, Op. 10 andFrankBridge’s String Sextet in E-Flat Major (1912). Earlier recordings include the Brahms Quintet in F Minor for Piano and String Quartet, Op 34, as well as the Dvořák Piano Quintet in A Major, Op 81 which were released on theMeridianlabel.
Veteran critic Joan Chissell of Gramophone wrote: “I enjoyed them (Concertante) most in Dvořák’s much-loved A Major Quintet…They risk a dare-devil tempo without loss of finesse in conveying the exuberant joie de vivre of the Scherzo and Finale. They also never leave us in a moment’s doubt as to the subtleties of Dvořák’s chamber-music scoring.” (February 2003). Concertante’s discography also includes Strauss’s String Sextet from Capriccio, the “Metamorphosen,” Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht,” and Mendelssohn’s Octet and the “Souvenir de Florence” by Tchaikovsky.
