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2005 NEWS ARCHIVES

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8/20/2005 NOW AND THEN: Susan Narucki, soprano; Alan Feinberg, piano; Curtis Macomber, violin; Gregory Hesselink, cello
- Monadnock Music's August 20 concert program will present David Rakowski's Songs for Violin and Soprano. Blistering, lyrical, boisterous, Rakowski's music is all about energy -- his music is the rarest of this genre in that it contains the vibrancy of bebop or rock, with the lyricism and smarts of the best of the European tradition. Susan Narucki, a Grammy-award winning soprano returns to MM, accompanied by Curtis Macomber, violin;Alan Feinberg, piano; Nancy Billman, horn; and Gregory Hesselink, cello. Also on the program are a horn trio by Brahms, and two pieces by James Bolle. A notable of the new-music scene who graces the August 20 concert of this series is a Vermont native, David Rakowski, who is currently the recipient of Chamber Music Society's Elise L. Stoeger Prize given by CMS for significant contributions to the chamber music repertory.
  
  David Rakowski's Violin Songs were premiered and performed twice by Susan Narucki and Curtis Macomber on a Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center Double Exposure Series concert in New York, November 18, 2004. Narucki and Macomber, both MM "regulars", will perform the piece again on this concert. A native of Vermont, David Rakowski studied with Robert Ceely and John Heiss at New England Conservatory, with Milton Babbitt, Peter Westergaard and Paul Lansky at Princeton, and with Luciano Berio at Tanglewood. He has received the Rome Prize, an Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and awards and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Tanglewood Music Center, BMI, Columbia University, and the International Horn Society.
  
  Nancy Billmann will be the horn soloist, Alan Feinberg the pianist, and Curtis Macomber the violinist in the Brahms Horn Trio in E flat, Op. 40. A survey of Brahms's orchestral works readily reveals the special fondness the composer had for the horn, an instrument he played as a youth. For example, the Serenade No. 1, the First and Second Symphonies, the B- flat Piano Concerto, all have prominent horn episodes that linger in the memory. Yet in spite of his horn sympathies, Brahms engaged the instrument in only one chamber music work - the present Trio, which he wrote in 1865. One can only speculate that, having produced this uniquely wonderful piece, the composer felt that he had said all he had to say about the horn in a chamber context.
  
  Schubert was well aware of the large shadow cast by Beethoven, as composers continued to be even a generation later. Schubert once wrote to a friend, "Who can do anything after Beethoven?" However, Beethoven's example was to prove as much an inspiration as a problem. While Schubert was only to live 18 months after Beethoven's death, he took it upon himself to prove that he was a worthy successor to this great master. It was during these last 18 months of his life that Schubert produced a run of ambitious instrumental and choral pieces that were inspired by Beethoven. The Piano Trio in E-flat Major is one of those works. Alan Feinberg is the pianist, with violinist Curtis Macomber and cellist Gregory Hesselink.
  
  The music for James Bolle's Pieces for Violin and Voice is set on three poems by Samuel Johnson, including "The Death of the Itinerant Fiddler," as well as excerpts from Milton's great elegaic poem "Lycidas".
  
  The text for Bolle's voice and piano pieces includes newspaper accounts and classifieds from the same day, so the material used for the music runs from the very exalted to extremely banal. This background material sums up in a nutshell the programming spirit of Monadnock Music - from the elevated to the quotidian. All of Bolle's and Rakowski's songs function on an intimate and close scale, things happen quickly; they are juxtaposed on the same program with pieces by Brahms and Schubert, that require an expansive expression.
  
  Three free concerts utilizing a full range of string, woodwind, and brass players are also part of Monadnock Music's final concert week. On Thursday August 18 at 8 pm at the Community Church of Harrisville and Chesham (in Harrisville), there will be an all-quintet program. Quintets by Wranitzky, Nielsen, Boccherini, and Brahms will be played by wind and string players from the Monadnock Music ensemble. The first part of this concert will be a rug concert, where children sit on rugs at the front, right up close to the musicians, for the first part of the concert.
  
  On Friday at 8 pm at the Washington Congregational Church, the Wranitzky, Brahms, and Nielsen quintets will be heard again, as well as the Poulenc Sonata for clarinet and bassoon.
  
  The final concert of Monadnock Music's 40th season will take place on Sunday, August 21 at 4 pm at the Jaffrey Center Meetinghouse. On the program are the Brahms Quintet in G and an Octet for winds and strings by Reicha. Petrassi's "Tre per sette" for woodwinds and Martino's Concertino for wind quintet complete the program.
  
  Background Materials--Bios
  
  Works by David Rakowski have been commissioned by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Sequitur, Network for New Music (Philadelphia), Koussevitzky Music Foundation (for Ensemble 21), Boston Musica Viva, the Fromm Foundation, Dinosaur Annex, the Crosstown Ensemble, Speculum Musicae, the Riverside Symphony, Parnassus, The Composers Ensemble, and others. He has twice been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, in 2002 for Ten of a Kind, commissioned by the U.S. Marine Band, and in 1999 for Persistent Memory, commissioned by Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. His music has been recorded by several labels and has been performed worldwide.
  
  James Bolle is Monadnock Music's founder and music director. He began organizing and conducting groups while still in high school. His compositions have been performed in the US, Israel, and Canada, and include an opera Oleum Canis which was recorded for Serenus Records. He has been guest conductor in the US, Israel, Europe, and most recently in Russia. In 1987 he received a special award from Artisjus, the Hungarian Music Publishing Bureau, and he is the recipient of Columbia University's prestigious Ditson Conductor's Award. He was Artist Laureate of New Hampshire from 2000-2002.
  
  Soprano Susan Narucki sang John Adams' "Nixon in China" with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of the composer, Stravinsky's "Les Noces" with the San Francisco Symphony, and David Del Tredici's "Syzygy" with the London Sinfonietta. She has sung at festivals in Paris, London, Warsaw, Lisbon, Munich, and Vienna, and has offered recitals at Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, Tisch Center for the Arts, Princeton University, and the American Academy in Rome. Chamber music appearances include Da Camera, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and Speculum Musicae.
  
  Alan Feinberg, piano, has achieved a remarkable reputation as a vanguard pianist and musician who has charted his own unique path in music. Mr. Feinberg has received four Grammy nominations for "Best Instrumentalist". He is among those few who are able to build a bridge between music of the past and present. His repertoire ranges from Byrd to Babbitt, and he has over 300 premieres to his credit. He has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, The San Fransico Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and at numerous festivals in Europe and Japan. He has recorded for Decca/Argo, CRI, New World, Bridge, Nonesuch, and EMI/Angel.
  
  Praised by Fanfare magazine for playing that is "remarkable for its depth of feeling as well as for technical excellence," Curtis Macomber is one of the most versatile soloists and chamber musicians before the public today. Equally at home with works ranging from Bach to Babbitt, he has been recognized for many years as a leading advocate for the music of our time. He has participated in hundreds of premieres, commissions and first recordings of solo violin and chamber works by, among others, Carter, Davidovsky, Perle, Wuorinen, and Mackey.
8/13/2005 MUSIC OF OUR TIME: Ole Bohn; So Percussion; Monadnock Music Festival Orchestra
- Monadnock Music's program for August 13th on 8 pm at the Peterborough Town House includes works by Ligeti, Copland and Bolle, and also, performed by SO Percussion, two works by Steve Reich who will receive the MacDowell Medal at the MacDowell Colony on the following day. Both the concert and the Colony are in Peterborough, NH.
  
  The August 13 concert will include Monadnock Music's performance of a recent work by György Ligeti, Ramifications; two works by this year's MacDowell Medal recipient Steve Reich ("Drumming" and "Clapping Music"); and a 20th century "classic," the Nonet by Aaron Copland. The last piece on the program, James Bolle's Rituals for Violin and Small Orchestra, was commissioned by Norwegian radio. Violinist Ole Bohn of Norway will play the premiere at Monadnock Music on August 13; later this year he will perform this piece in Oslo and other northern European cities.
  
  One of the most respected American classical composers of the twentieth century, Aaron Copland was the first MacDowell Colony President after Marian MacDowell and the first music medallist of the Colony. Copland was an old friend of Monadnock Music where he heard his music performed over several years. His Nonet for Strings is one of his "modernist" scores, but richly emotive even so.
  
  György Ligeti is also one of the most highly esteemed living composers today, with music that is always fresh, never predictable. Ligeti's best known work is the "Requiem" of 1965, an excerpt from which appeared in "2001: A Space Odyssey". His Ramifications was written in 1968 for two string ensembles that had been tuned a quarter tone apart, creating disarming harmonies that build from nothing, peak and slowly disappear.
  
  The highlight of the August 13 program will be a young group SO Percussion from New York, which will play Steve Reich's "Drumming" and "Clapping Music" on the eve of the MacDowell Colony awards. Drumming, Reich's seminal work, was inspired by traditional drumming styles from Ghana to create a new kind of polyrhythmic concert music. It introduces the new technique of gradually substituting beats for rests (or rests for beats) within a constantly repeating rhythmic cycle.
  
  According to the musicians of So, "Percussion has a unique ability to thrill and captivate. Its expressive possibilities range far beyond beats and rhythms, speaking to the impact of sound on our very lives. A So Ensemble performance seeks to convey this impact. From the pure joy of drumming to the strange beauty of everyday objects, audiences are uniquely moved and entertained by this total immersion in sound and imagination. So is a form of the Japanese verb meaning 'to play.' For us, it means sharing the joy and spirit of music making whenever we can!"
  
  Cited by the New York Times for "brilliant" and "consistently impressive" performances, So Percussion's 2004-2005 season has included performances at the Santa Fe International Festival of New Music, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Merkin Concert Hall, Carnegie's Zankell Hall with the American Composers Orchestra, and the Other Minds Festival. The ensemble has been featured at the Bang on a Can Marathon, the BAM Next Wave Festival, and WNYC's New Sounds and Sound-check in New York. The group received the Chamber Music America/ASCAP Adventurous Programming award.
  
  The group's repertoire includes newly commissioned compositions, well-known avant-garde works by such composers as John Cage, and compositions with roots in rock and roll or that draw upon African and Asian traditions. So Percussion fearlessly employs the sounds of marimbas, kodo drums, keyboard instruments as well as wood planks and tin cans.
  
  Free concerts this week will be held in some of MM's more northern concert towns: at the Walpole Unitarian Church on Wednesday, August 10; at the Nelson Congregational Church on Thursday, August 11, and at Jones Hall in Marlow on Friday August 12. All three concerts, at 8 pm, feature music for winds and strings. In Walpole on August 10, the program includes the Koechlin Trio for flute, clarinet, and bassoon; the Mozart Serenade in E flat, K. 375 arranged for sextet, and the Beethoven Septet, Op. 20. On August 11 in Nelson, the program includes Mozart's Quintet in g minor as well as the Serenade in E flat; the Koechlin Trio; and the Sextet for winds by Danzi. On August 12 in Marlow, the Mozart Quintet in g minor and the Boccherini Quintet in E for oboe and strings; a sextet by Martinu; and "Look She Said," by Dartmouth faculty member Christian Wolff, performed by Robert Black, doublebass (for whom it was written).
8/06/2005 40TH ANNIVERSARY GALA CONCERT; THE "NEW" IN THE "GREAT": ALL-BEETHOVEN Monadnock Music Festival Orchestra, James Bolle, conductor, Russell Sherman, piano
- A gala all-Beethoven concert will be the centerpiece of Monadnock Music's 2005 concert season, the 40th Anniversary season. Legendary pianist Russell Sherman will perform with the Monadnock Music Festival Orchestra under the direction of James Bolle, on August 6th at 8 pm at the Peterborough Town House. On the program are music from the ballet "The Creatures of Prometheus," the Eighth Symphony, and the Piano Concerto No. 5, the "Emperor" Concerto. Northeast Delta Dental is the Gala 40th concert sponsor.
  
  Russell Sherman, soloist in the "Emperor" Concerto, has a reputation as a virtuoso and interpreter of remarkable intelligence. He has performed with the country's leading orchestras, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and San Francisco, and in prestigious keyboard series from coast to coast. Abroad, his artistry has been heard in major cities in Europe, South America and Asia. According to American Record Guide, Sherman belongs among the elite of Beethovenians. He is a visionary artist, shedding new light and offering new insights into music that has been heard countless times. Sherman, who this year celebrates the 60th anniversary of his debut at New York City's Town Hall, has collaborated for over thirty years with MM's Music Director James Bolle.
  
  During the first decade of the 19th century, Beethoven designed his music on an increasingly large and heroic scale. In the Eighth Symphony Beethoven dramatically compressed the scale and duration of the music, concentrating on its bare essentials. In this respect the Symphony's directness and disarming simplicity draws attention to Beethoven's abruptness, violence, unconventionality and humor.
  
  Beethoven made his name in Vienna as a dashing young piano virtuoso in the 1790s, and his first large-scale concert - at the Burgtheater in March 1795 - afforded him the opportunity to display his dynamic pianism in his own Second Piano Concerto. Like Mozart before him, he saw the concerto as the perfect performing vehicle, giving him the opportunity to display his skills as composer, director and performer. But deafness overtook him, putting a premature end to his life as a performing musician, and after the Fifth he was never to return to the concerto form.
  
  Beethoven's Fifth Piano Concerto is known as the 'Emperor' - an unauthentic title which has been attributed to John Baptist Cramer, a pianist and music publisher based in London, who was a long-time friend of Beethoven and champion of his music. The title seems apposite, though, given the work's majestic grandeur and breadth of conception. Some years after composing "The Creatures of Prometheus," Beethoven wrote that music should strike fire from a man. He added: 'Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy; it is the wine of a new procreation and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for men and makes them drunk with the spirit.'
  
  Did Beethoven see himself in the portrayal of Prometheus, the bringer of spiritual fire to man? The music for "The Creatures of Prometheus" marked a turning point in Beethoven's career as the Classical period gave way to the age of Romanticism. The 'Eroica' Symphony (1803), the opera Fidelio (1805), and the Violin Concerto (1806) all belong to the new world that he began to explore after completing the ballet.
  
  Monadnock Music's trustees and friends will host special dinners in their homes to celebrate the 40th Anniversary season. The dinner will precede the concert. For more information call the MM office: 603-924-7610/800-868-9613.
  
  This concert week begins with free concerts in the Wilton Center Unitarian Church (Wednesday, August 3, 8 pm), at the Milford Town Hall (Thursday, August 4, 8 pm), and at the Fitzwilliam Town Hall (Friday, August 5, 8 pm). Performers will include the Ciompi String Quartet, harpist Barbara Allen, violinist Ole Bohn and Gerald Itzkoff, cellists Rafael Popper-Keizer and Gregory Hesselink, flutist Laura Gilbert, and oboist Willa Henigman.
  
  Sponsor of the Wilton Center concert is Hitchiner Manufacturing, which also sponsors the Milford concert together with Kerk Motion Products.
7/28/2005 VIRTUOSO PIANO III: Konstantin Lifschitz
- On July 30 and 31 at the Peterborough Town House, virtuoso pianist Konstantin Lifschitz will be in residence for a "tripleheader" weekend which includes an all-Bach recital (5 pm on July 30); a program of Shostakovich, Beethoven and Webern in which he is joined by the Ciompi Quartet (8 pm, also on July 30); and a solo recital of works by Schubert, Enescu, and Liszt (Sunday, July 31 at 4 pm). This week begins with two free concerts in Francestown and Deering (July 28 and 29) which partner the Ciompi Quartet with clarinetist Michael Sussman.
  
  In 1994, Russian pianist Konstantin Lifschitz burst onto the international scene with a recording of Bach's Goldberg Variations. The CD received a Grammy nomination and was praised as the most convincing Bach interpretation since Glenn Gould. Lifschitz was only 17."Whatever he sees or imagines in the music," wrote a Boston Globe reviewer of the young prodigy, "he can realize without obstacle at the piano." Today, at 29, Lifschitz is celebrated for his exquisite musical sensibility and nuanced playing. In spring 1997 he toured Europe with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, and in 1999 he made his debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As a recitalist he has appeared in London, Paris, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Madrid, Milan, Rome, Tokyo, Moscow, Zurich, St. Petersburg, Montreal, and the US. He made his New York City recital debut in fall 2002 and debuted as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in spring 2003. In chamber music he has appeared with Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky, Lynn Harrell, and Mstislav Rostropovich .
  
  The concert on Saturday, July 30 opens at 5 pm with Lifschitz performing an all-Bach program, the Partita in e minor and the St. Anne Prelude and Fugue. Following a dinner break, at 8 pm the Ciompi String Quartet will perform Shostakovich's Quartet No. 11; Beethoven's Quartet No. 11, Op. 95; and Six Bagatelles by Anton Webern. The Ciompi Quartet is quartet-in-residence at Duke University and has returned to Monadnock Music for many seasons.
  
  Konstantin Lifschitz joins the Ciompi Quartet for Shostakovich's Piano Quintet, Op. 57, a dramatic work completed in 1940 which foreshadows the war into which the Soviet Union was soon to be plunged. Rostislav Dubinsky, original first violinist of the Borodin Quartet recalls in his book, Not By Music Alone: "For a time the Quintet overshadowed even such events as the football matches between the main teams. The Quintet was discussed in trams, people tried to sing in the streets the second defiant theme of the finale. War that soon started completely changed the life of the country as well as the consciousness of the people.ÉThe Quintet remained in the consciousness of the people as the last ray of light before the future sank into a dark gloom."
  
  This double concert—both concerts for the price of one—includes a dinner break during which audience members can picnic in a local park or dine at one of Peterborough's fine restaurants.
  
  On Sunday, July 30 at 4 pm, Konstantin Lifschitz will cap the weekend with a varied solo recital which includes Schubert's Sonata in B flat, D. 960, his final piano sonata, the Sonata No. 3 by Romanian composer Georges Enescu, and Lizst's First Mephisto Waltz.
  
  Notes for July 30 Concert
  
  There is a certain alchemy to combining musical works successfully on a concert program. Over the years I have realized how a synergy can develop between juxtaposed pieces, so that, when heard together, each work brings out the other's virtues. This is what one strives for, hoping to avoid the reverse: if you're unlucky, that can also happen, and each piece will show up the others' faults. I remember a concert where a Beethoven quartet (Opus 59 #1) seemed positively tedious next to an elegant new work by an unknown young composer!
  
  We hope tonight's four pieces will make interesting, compatible company. Two are by Shostakovich: the expansive Piano Quintet (1940), from his heroic wartime period, and the 11th String Quartet, written 25 years later when he faced a less dangerous, but perhaps a bleaker reality under the dreary and seemingly endless rule of the Soviet regime. The iconic Piano Quintet is at bottom a romantic work, full of the most tragic emotion. It participates eagerly in the great tradition, even presenting a serious but wonderful full-bodied fugue as itâs second movement. By contrast, the 11th String Quartet is his shortest, lasting only 12 minutes, nevertheless containing no less than seven very different movements. In this piece Shostakovich approaches, interestingly, the minimalism that was just then hatching in the West: he employs the simplest ideas such that they seem to gain effect and power through constant repetition.
  
  Brevity is something of a theme on this concert: the other two quartets on our program are also as short as can be. Beethoven's Op. 95 is angry and tightly wound, as though he himself were annoyed with his earlier long-winded tendencies. In this work he has no patience for explanation. The result is a thrilling, breathless ride, despite the rest offered by the somewhat relaxed allegretto movement. If you want your Beethoven straight up, this is the piece for you.
  
  Far shorter still, lasting only 5 minutes, are Webern's Six Bagatelles, Op. 9. These are likely to be over before you have quite settled in to listen, so wake up! Thereâs a tremendous amount going on every instant. The fun of listening to the piece is to try and get what it is about, much as one strives to do when reading haiku. The trouble with these is that you can't go back to re-read them. Of course, the quartet might decide to take pity and play them again, giving the audience (and themselves) a second chance.
  
  —Jonathan Bagg, violist, Ciompi Quartet "This pianist is extraordinary...a range of feeling from passion to delicacy." The Independent, Wigmore Hall, London, Adrian Jack
  
  " ... Konstantin Lifschitz, a Russian in his mid-20's, made his Philharmonic debut with a finely calibrated, thoughtful account of the Prokofiev..." Allan Kozin, NYPO, The New York Times
  
  "... Lifschitz, whose American debut at a Newport Festival recital, was musically and emotionally unforgettable: He made Chopin's Op. 10 Etudes sound like pages from a diary of the soul. This is playing that penetrates the innermost secrets of the heart and mind." Richard Dyer, Boston Globe
  
  "He is a phenomenon. Konstantin Lifschitz apparently began his pianistic career at seventeen with a work to which others come only at a mature age: Bach's Goldberg Variations. The recording received a Grammy Nomination Award and was praised as the most convincing Bach interpretation since Glenn Gould." Albrecht Dümling, Berlin Konzerthaus Groβe Saal, FrankfurterAllgemeine
7/23/2005 DOUBLE CONCERT: Ciompi Quartet with Alan Feinberg, Piano; VIRTUOSO PIANO II: Anna Polonsky
- Peterborough, NH - On Saturday, July 23 at 8 pm at the Peterborough Town House, the Ciompi String Quartet of Duke University will be joined by pianist Alan Feinberg for a concert of works by Haydn, Adès and Schubert. The concert opens at 5 pm with a Youth Ensemble program featuring young local talent-twin brothers Ian MacKay, violin, and Jacob MacKay, cello, both of Francestown. Beethoven's Duet #1 (movements 1, 2, and 3) is on the program at 5 pm. The McKay brothers will also perform with members of the Ciompi Quartet. This program is funded by a special gift in memory of Anne Stewart.
  
  There is a dinner break between the two concerts during which concertgoers can bring a picnic to enjoy in one of the local parks or dine at one of the area's fine restaurants.
  
  The 8 p.m concert will be played by the Ciompi String Quartet with Alan Feinberg, piano, and will include Haydn's Quartet Op. 76, #6 in E flat; Adès' Piano Quintet, and Schubert's Quartet in G, D. 887.
  
  Jonathan Bagg, violist of the Ciompi Quartet, comments "Our concert on July 23 is cast in a familiar mold: we start with a classical piece, continue with something contemporary, and finish with a big romantic work. It is a well-tested formula, covering a musical territory so vast as to be essentially limitless. While an all-modern concert or and all-Mozart program can be welcome and refreshing, it does not follow that there is anything stale in an evening that spans the entire history of the string quartet from its beginnings to the present!"
  
  Ciompi Quartet violist Bagg continues, "The 8 pm concert begins with one of Haydn's last quartets, his Opus 76 No. 6. It is a work written in the style he came to at the end of his life, one which achieves the most difficult of artistic goals: music so sophisticated that it can change emotional temperature on a dime, capturing with subtle shadings of harmony the most complex feelings, yet which speaks simply, directly, the way only someone in complete control of his medium can. Humor and depth in late Haydn can be the same thing, and there is much of both in this quartet. The challenge for the modern listener is to hear all that is happening within the courtly parameters of Haydn's polished high-classicism."
  
  Bagg notes, "English composer Thomas Adès emerged rapidly in the 1990s as one of the hottest stars of the younger generation. His reputation has been spread in large part though his operas, Powder Her Face (1995), and more recently The Tempest (2004). One thing is sure: Ades did not achieve fame by giving his listener music that is easy to digest. This is reassuring--originality, complexity, in short music that challenges even as it entertains, is something we recognize in the great music of the past as key to its richness and depth. And it's what the best composers in our era have striven to attain as well, sometimes at the expense of isolating themselves from the general public. So when one emerges who reaches for these things and succeeds in generating broad excitement, it is... well, exciting."
  
  Schubert's last and longest string quartet, in G major, completes the program. Jonathan Bagg adds, "What we love most in Schubert we find in abundance in this work: tender, expansive, singing melody; glorious contrasts of light and darkness that are startling in their emotional depth. The work is in fact about the elemental conflict in classical music between darkness (the minor mode) and light (the major mode). Obsessively, the composer examines and dramatizes the two emotional states conjured by the two modes most central to western music, and, by the end of the work we are wrung out; in the process we have heard some of Schubert's most intellectual music, as well as some of his most gripping. As much as anything he wrote, the G major quartet knocks on the door of the modern era with a quasi-expressionist aesthetic, full of angst and desolate yearning."
  
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  "I would like to make this art form have relevance and immediacy in our day," says Anna Polonsky, 27-year old pianist who on July 24 at 4 p.m. at the Peterborough Town House returns to play at Monadnock Music after her wildly applauded debut at MM last year. Anna Polonsky has performed at festivals such as Marlboro, Santa Fe, Bard Music Festival, Chamber Music Northwest, and Bargemusic, has given concerts in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Alice Tully Hall in New York, and has toured extensively throughout the US, Europe, and Asia. Next season she will make her Wigmore Hall debut in London and will take part in the European Broadcasting Union's project to broadcast all of Mozart's keyboard sonatas during 2005.
  
  Anna Polonsky's program includes two major works, sonatas by Schubert (in E flat, D. 568) and Shostakovich (in b minor, Op. 62). Though they were written over 100 years apart and in very different cultural circumstances, they are linked by the poignant tone behind them. The remainder of the program will consist of beautiful miniatures by W. A. Mozart and the Spanish 18th-century composer (and monk!) Antonio Soler, played as pairs, a light-hearted virtuoso piece contrasted with one of poignancy and introspection.
  
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7/21/2002 NHPR Front Porch Interview with Alan Feinberg
- Pianist Alan Feinberg has performed as a soloist with some of the country's finest symphony orchestras. He's premiered over 300 pieces and has made a career of playing a wide breadth of music, from William Byrd to John Adams. But according to Alan, his career path was not always so promising. He'll talk to us about his unlikely success and his concerns about the role of serious music in our culture.
  
  Alan is a board member of the Monadnock Music Festival. As part of the Festival, he will appear with the Ciompi String Quartet on Saturday, July 23, at 8pm. The concert will feature the works of Haydn, Ades, and Shubert. Listen to the interview.
7/16/2005 BLUE HERON RENAISSANCE CHOIR: 15th Century English Sacred And Secular Love Songs By Dunstable, Frye, Power, And Morton; VIRTUOSO PIANO I: Virginia Eskin
- Peterborough, NH - Blue Heron Renaissance Choir returns for the fifth time to Monadnock Music Festival with a collection of 15th century love songs. "When Metcalfe and his exceptional group are performing it, this becomes music to listen to intently--and blissfully," wrote the Boston Globe about Blue Heron's performance in the Boston Early Music Festival last month.
  
  Until the late 14th century most medieval English composers had remained anonymous; here for the first time some are named - Leonel Power (c. 1380-1445) and John Dunstable (1390-1453), the major figures of the day. Music in its early stages was inevitably regarded as a science, and there was nothing of our modern "artistic" conception about it. It was a jigsaw puzzle of fitting notes together-a matter of mechanical ingenuity. Theorists were more plentiful than composers. Dunstable died in 1453 (his reputation as a mathematician and astronomer, we might say astrologer today, added to his contemporary stature), and was clearly the leading composer in Europe. His greatness lay in the composition of fluent contrapuntal lyrical music, and in the avoidance of those harmonic clashes that were the bane of lesser polyphonic writers.
  
  Particularly interesting is the way in which the driving force behind new techniques of composition, located with Machaut and the French school during the mid-14th century, moves at around the turn of the century to England, only to be taken up again by the Burgundian school in France in the mid-15th century. For the initiated this concert is a fascinating journey through the period's most significant developments in polyphony, enjoying both well loved and lesser-known pieces along the way. For those lucky enough to be meeting this music for the first time it is a spellbinding introduction to some of the greatest music of Middle Ages.
  
  Even these early attempts show certain aspects that help define English music, most important of which is the preference for using thirds, as opposed to the fourths and fifths that were the norm elsewhere. Indeed, to the modern listener, early 15th c. English music sounds sweeter and fuller than continental music of the same period. This is due to its use of full triads, block chords or lightly ornamented homorhythmic passages and consonant harmonies that avoid dissonances except as passing notes.
  
  Blue Heron Choir is sponsored in part by the generosity of Monadnock Paper Mills.
  
  Background note:
  BLUE HERON RENAISSANCE CHOIR, directed by Scott Metcalfe, is an ensemble of eight to fifteen singers from the Boston area specializing in Renaissance polyphony. Blue Heron combines a commitment to vivid live performance with knowledge of the latest research into source material and historical performance practice. The ensemble's principal repertoire interests in the last few years have been late fifteenth-century Franco-Flemish polyphony, sacred and secular Spanish music between about 1500 and 1575, and neglected early sixteenth-century English music, especially the rich and unexplored repertory of the Peterhouse partbooks (ca. 1540).
  
  ***
  
  Virginia Eskin, a California native and long-time Boston resident, an extremely versatile solo pianist, chamber player and lecturer, known for both standard classical repertoire and ragtime, a long-time champion of the works of American and European women composers, returns to Monadnock Music on July 17, 4pm.
  
  Ms. Eskin will present a program of comparisons featuring music of MacDowell, Thomas Oboe Lee, and Virgil Thomson, juxtaposed with "old-time" favorite works by Mozart, Schumann, Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin. As a musician, Eskin presents a peculiarly buoyant, American, democratic and practical passion for marketing masterpieces-for demystifying the European haute musique tradition and showing how it is translated into American terms. Virginia Eskin will prepare us for this exploration at a 3 p.m. pre-concert talk, also at the Peterborough Town House.
  
  Boston Globe critic Richard Dyer has written, "The harder the music, the better Eskin plays... She's not just a pianist but a communicator." Reviewing her performance of the Paganini Variations another Globe critic described her as "fearless and right on technically, and burning all bridges and taking no prisoners." An American Record Guide review noted "... she displays a wonderful affinity for ragtime."
  
  Virginia Eskin's concert is sponsored in part by the generosity of Markem Corporation.
  
  Background note:
  A well-known concert pianist, Eskin has performed as a soloist throughout the United States, Europe and Israel. In addition to concerto performances with many symphony orchestras such as the San Francisco, Louisville, New Hampshire, and Utah Symphony orchestras, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the Boston Classical, the Boston Pops, and the Israel Sinfonietta, she has performed with the Muir, Sarasota, and Portland String Quartets and with members of the Guarnieri Quartet. She has made numerous appearances at the Newport Music Festival (RI) and as a recitalist and chamber player at the Monadnock Music Festival (NH). Eskin has 20 recordings to her credit, many by American composers and by women, on the Northeastern, Leonardo, Genesis, Musical Heritage, Channel Classical, Koch International, and Cambria Labels. An acknowledged authority on the music of 19th century American composers and music by women, she has performed on national radio networks in England, Italy, and Greece, in addition to many appearances on National Public Radio in the U.S. Her career has been graced with many awards, including an ASCAP Award for her dedication to American music.
7/09/2005 Opening Night New Zealand String Quartet
5/12/2005 Monadnock Music Kicks Off Concert Season
- In the upcoming 40th season, I have devised a series of 28 concerts which include works from the 14th century to American works completed yesterday.
  
  I feel that it is important to give performances that surprise, amuse, arouse and touch both performers and listeners, and to do this by presenting combinations of works that enhance each other, rather than criticize each other.
  
  This year we present great masterworks by Beethoven: the string quartets #11 and #15, the “Emperor” Concerto, the 8th Symphony; two string quartets by Haydn; Brahms’ Horn Trio and Opus 111 String Quartet; and Schubert’s B flat piano sonata and Opus 100 Trio, plus two different interpretations of the G major string quartet (these last two have, surprisingly, not previously been performed at Monadnock Music).
  
  Music of Our Time honors Steve Reich, who receives the MacDowell Medal this summer, Ligeti, Copland’s neglected Nonet for Strings, Takemitsu, Rakowski, Kuss, Adès, and the premiere of my Rituals, a concerto for violin (Ole Bohn) and large ensemble.
  
  Konstantin Lifschitz returns as a recitalist and in a double concert with the Ciompi Quartet, he will play Bach’s Solo Partita in e minor, the St. Anne Prelude and Fugue, and the Shostakovich Quintet.
  
  On the Early Music side, we welcome the return of Blue Heron Renaissance Choir; for the R.M. Eldredge Memorial Concert, Phoebe Carrai will play Bach Solo Cello Suites at All Saints’ Church in Peterborough.
  
  Much to enjoy---for audience and performers!
  --Jim Bolle
3/15/2005 New Executive Director For Monadnock Music
- After a nationwide search lasting more than five Monadnock Music Board president Ray Petty has announced that Elena Siyanko will become Monadnock Music’s new Executive Director in a few weeks. Ms. Siyanko grew up in Moscow during the Soviet era, then came to the US and graduated from Mt. Holyoke College, following which she earned her Master’s Degree in Arts Administration at Columbia University.
- She comes to Monadnock Music from her most recent position as the Associate Director for Cultural Development at Bard College, where she principally worked with its Summerscape Festival. She has been deeply involved with cultural exchange programs and major fundraising; she also has extensive production experience in the performing arts. She says, “ I have always loved festivals, and have worked at Jacob’s Pillow and the Lincoln Center Festival, and last summer’s experience confirmed for me that I have a true passion for all aspects of putting on a festival. I love it all, from selecting the right donors to taking care of artists’ needs.”
- “I felt a real connection when I read about your organization's mission. I grew up in the former Soviet Union with a belief that the arts, and classical music specifically, should be accessible and affordable to all (as it was to me personally); this is the only way to cultivate young audiences and ensure continuing support for classical music -- and even its survival. It will be a dream job for me to foster and develop Monadnock’s mission and to nurture what has already been achieved over the many years of Monadnock Music’s existence.”
- Monadnock Music’s mission includes a commitment to bringing exceptional quality of music to the towns and villages of the Monadnock region and to create and nurture a community of music lovers and musicians dedicated to the joys of live music. Monadnock Music is a traditional “must stop” for many musicians who seek to explore and extend their artistry through performing a varied and imaginative reportoire.
- “We are very lucky to have found Elena,” says Board of Trustees President Ray Petty. “We had a number of impressive applicants for the job, but her passion, energy and dedication are extraordinary.”
- Monadnock Music’s Music Director James Bolle agrees wholeheartedly: “From the first time I met her, I knew she really identified with what Monadnock Music stands for. I’m really looking forward to working with her to advance our mission.”
- Her many interests include poetry, dance, theater, and film as well as music; she is interested in organic farming and likes to mountain bike, hike and swim.
3/15/2005 Youth Ensemble Showcase
- We are excited to announce the launching of our Youth Ensemble Showcase, a new initiative designed to encourage and support young chamber music players in New Hampshire. We are inviting youth ensembles from all over New Hampshire to compete for the opportunity to play at one of our ticketed concerts at the Peterborough Town House. Up to four ensembles will be chosen to perform at a special concert. Members must be no older than 18, with at least one member who is a New Hampshire resident. Wind, string or mixed ensembles with piano are all eligible to apply.
- The ensemble(s) will be selected by James Bolle, MM Music Director, and Jonathan Bagg, violist in the Ciompi Quartet and professor in the Music Department at Duke University. Monadnock Music will present the chosen ensembles in a prelude concert before one of the Town House concerts next summer.
- The concert is set up as a double concert so the first part will be the youth ensemble(s) performance, a dinner break (a picnic dinner is available), and then a concert by the famed Ciompi Quartet from Duke University. The youth musicians will have an opportunity to meet with the professional musicians and get feedback on their own performance. This program is funded by a special gift in memory of Anne Stewart.
- If you know of a talented youth ensemble that is strongly interested in a classical repertoire, please encourage them to enter this showcase.
  
  For more information, contact us at mm@monadnockmusic.org

© 2006 Monadnock Music