by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 7:00 PM
Show time: 7:30 PM
“Yes, playing string quartets is our job, and yes it is hard work, but we mostly do it for pleasure, like we always did,” says the Danish String Quartet, a highly sought-after ensemble of energetic musicians who met each other at music camp as teenagers. The Quartet returns to the Robert Mann Chamber Music Series with a varied program including work by Haydn, Stravinsky, and Mozart, as well as Shostakovich’s profound String Quartet No. 3 and three Irish folk melodies by Celtic harper and composer Turlough O’Carolan.
Artists:
Danish String Quartet
Program:
Joseph Haydn, String Quartet, Op. 77, No. 2: III, Andante
Igor Stravinsky, Three Pieces for String Quartet
Turlough O’Carolan, Three Melodies
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Divertimento in F Major, K. 138
Dmitri Shostakovich, String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73
by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 6:00 PM
Show time: 6:30 PM
The Washington Post declares that twin sister pianists Christina and Michelle Naughton “have to be heard to be believed”; the Festival is honored to welcome these audience favorites for an all-Mozart program. Following the charming serenade Eine kleine Nachtmusik (“A Little Night Music”), the Naughtons perform the Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra, written for Mozart to play with his beloved sister Nannerl. After intermission is Mozart’s Haffner Symphony, a staggering work of intensity and invention.
Artists:
Gemma New, conductor
Christina and Michelle Naughton, piano duo
Program:
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Eine kleine Nachtmusik
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Concerto in E-flat Major for Two Pianos, K. 365
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Symphony No. 35, Haffner
by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 6:00 PM
Show time: 6:30 PM
Celebrated pianist Awadagin Pratt makes his Festival debut with music old and new, beginning with Bach’s nimble Keyboard Concerto in A major. Pratt then performs a piece he commissioned from lauded composer Jessie Montgomery; her Rounds is inspired by an epic poem by T.S. Eliot and the opposing forces that appear in nature — “action and reaction, dark and light, stagnant and swift.” In Eastern folklore, the princess Scheherazade told the cruel Sultan 1,001 stories in order to save her own life; Rimsky-Korsakov borrows Scheherazade’s tales of royalty, festivals, sea voyages, and more in his richly orchestrated fantasy.
Artists:
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Awadagin Pratt, piano
Program:
Johann Sebastian Bach, Keyboard Concerto in A Major BWV 1055
Jessie Montgomery, Rounds for piano and string orchestra (2022)
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade
by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 7:00 PM
Show time: 7:30 PM
Celebrated pianist Awadagin Pratt makes his Festival debut with music old and new, beginning with Bach’s nimble Keyboard Concerto in A major. Pratt then performs a piece he commissioned from lauded composer Jessie Montgomery; her Rounds is inspired by an epic poem by T.S. Eliot and the opposing forces that appear in nature — “action and reaction, dark and light, stagnant and swift.” In Eastern folklore, the princess Scheherazade told the cruel Sultan 1,001 stories in order to save her own life; Rimsky-Korsakov borrows Scheherazade’s tales of royalty, festivals, sea voyages, and more in his richly orchestrated fantasy.
Artists:
Peter Oundjian, conductor
Awadagin Pratt, piano
Program:
Johann Sebastian Bach, Keyboard Concerto in A Major BWV 1055
Jessie Montgomery, Rounds for piano and string orchestra (2022)
Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade
by Rachel Herrington | Mar 5, 2024
Door time: 7:00 PM
Show time: 7:30 PM
The Robert Mann Chamber Music Series continues with a spotlight on the Festival’s own musicians. Haydn’s String Quartets achieved a new range of expression for secular music; his String Quartet C major, Op. 20, No. 2 is a diamond from start to finish. Debussy, a master of impressionism and fantasy, creates a quintessential dreamscape in his Sonata for Flute, Harp, and Viola. Instead of treating his string octet as two individual quartets, Mendelssohn’s innovative Octet finds all eight musicians working tightly together in, as the composer requested, “symphonic orchestral style.”
Artists:
Colorado Music Festival musicians
Program:
Joseph Haydn, String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2
Claude Debussy, Sonata for flute, viola and harp
Felix Mendelssohn, String Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20
