2011 SEASON OVERVIEW
Monadnock Music will present 28 concerts across the Monadnock Region this summer, in 18 locations ranging from small churches to Peterborough’s central Town House. Our uniquely accessible village concerts offer great music 2-4 nights a week with no admission fee. Their beautiful, intimate, and informal settings contribute to the communal feeling of excitement and discovery at Monadnock Music. This year again features the Mozart Trail, in which a different string quartet of Mozart (from the six quartets he dedicated to Haydn) will be performed each week at village concerts. Audiences can follow the trail from town to town to hear the entire set during the summer. Our distinguished performers are a mix of veterans and exciting young talent. Also present this year to speak at concerts will be Pulitzer winning composer Melinda Wagner, Paul Brantley, and this year’s Duke Composing Fellow, Bryan Christian, whose new song setting of an Emily Dickinson poem will be premiered. Emily Dickinson will be a presence over the entire summer, with musical cameos on several village concerts, and a starring role in two or our Town House concerts. Poet and Dickinson scholar Susan Snively will introduce the concert July 23 and read two of Dickinson’s poems.
The Town House and Chamber Masterpieces series range from chamber orchestra concerts to innovative, concept-based programs. Following are brief descriptions of the 11 ticketed concerts:
Thursday, July 7, St. Catharine’s Choir: The English Renaissance
In a concert honoring the 400 th anniversary of the King James Bible, director Edward Wickham brings the storied English choral tradition to New Hampshire with Cambridge University’s St. Catharine’s College Choir. Co-sponsored by the WaldenSchool.
Saturday, July 9, Essential Concerti
Tchaikovsky’s virtuosic Serenade for Strings, a selection of Handel arias, and a joyous concerto of Bach. Soloists: Ilana Davidson, soprano; Willa Henigman, oboe; Gabriela Diaz, violin.
Tuesday, July 12, Nicholas Kitchen: Illuminated Bach
Borromeo Quartet first violinist performs and comments on solo violin works of J.S. Bach. Movements from each of the six Sonatas and Partitas will be performed; discussion will be enhanced by projections of Bach’s manuscripts on a screen.
Saturday, July 16, Chamber Masterpieces I: The Borromeo Quartet
“These extraordinary musicians live inside the music they play."
— LLOYD SCHWARTZ, The Boston Phoenix
Saturday, July 23, Setting Emily: Dickinson’s poetry in music & dance
Emily Dickinson makes ever-deepening ripples in our culture with each passing generation. A favorite of composers, she has inspired music from Copland to Previn and beyond. Several concerts this summer celebrate and explore her genius and influence, with newly commissioned song settings and a dance performance commissioned for the occasion by choreographer Cherylyn Lavagnino. Dance by Cherylyn Lavagnino, with Ilana Davidson, soprano
Sunday, July 24, Chamber Masterpieces II: The Chiara Quartet
“Highly virtuosic, edge-of-the-seat playing..” - JEREMY EICHLER, the Boston Globe
Saturday, July 30, Vox Americana
The ideals and hardships of pioneer America have left their imprint on 200 years of our music. This concert knits together diverse examples, from early American communal singing to a late masterpiece of Dvorak, whose music was transformed by experiencing Native and African-American music.
Sunday, July 31, 4 PM, Krista River, mezzo and Virginia Eskin, piano
Framed by music of Americans Amy Beach and Marion Bauer are famous settings of Emily Dickinson’s poetry by Aaron Copland and Gordon Getty
Saturday, August 6, Mahler and Wagner
Conductor Hugh Keelan’s labor of love, arranging Mahler’s great song-symphony “Das Lied von der Erde” for smaller ensemble, allows us to bring it and Wagner’s “Siegfried Idyll”, two pinnacles of German romanticism, to the Town House stage.
Sunday, August 7, Chamber Masterpieces III
Brahms’ G major sextet ends this concert, which includes Ravel’s Sonate for violin and cello, and György Kurtag’s “Scenes from a Novel” for soprano and ensemble- among the contemporary master’s most celebrated pieces. Tony Arnold, soprano.
Sunday, August 14, 5 PM, Chamber Masterpieces IV
The season’s final concert ends with a long AMEN: Schubert’s great C major Quintet; it again features soprano Tony Arnold in a luminous Bach cantata, and the work that put contemporary master Thomas Ades on the map, his “Five Elliot Landscapes”.
