Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival

Sunday, March 6, 2011 - 3 p.m.

Schumann, Romances for oboe and piano

Franck, Quintet for Piano and Strings in F minor

Kevin Puts, Alternating Current for Piano

Beethoven, String Quartet Op.59 No.3

Alternating Current, which Kevin Puts wrote in 1997 and describes as “quick and Baroque,” provides the contrast in an otherwise rich Romantic program. Schumann’s aptly titled Romances are in effect tender, yearning songs for oboe. Higher drama comes from the dense and passionate Franck Quintet; in comparison, the Beethoven quartet is fairly even-tempered by that composer’s standards, and even includes an imitation Russian folk song.

Tuesday, March 8, 2011 - 8 p.m.

Saint-Saens, Sonata in D Major, Op.166 for Oboe and Piano

Lera Auerbach, Quartet No.4

Dutilleux, Chorale et Variations, for Piano (From Sonata Op.1)

Schumann, Piano Quartet in E flat major, Op.47

Lera Auerbach again proves a worthy successor to Shostakovich with her String Quartet No. 4, a 2007 work in 16 compact movements with such titles as “Dance of the Shadows” and “The Wind of Oblivion.” The Saint-Saëns Oboe Sonata, one of his very last works, hints at English pastoralism within its French Romantic style. A later French composer, Henri Dutilleux, became one of his nation’s most prominent composers of the 20th century; he wrote his 1948 Piano Sonata, from which the Chorale and Variations are drawn, as a gift for his pianist-bride. Robert Schumann, too, was married to a superb pianist, but he claimed the keyboard part for himself in early performances of his Piano Quartet, one of the finest examples of its kind.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - 8 p.m.

Fire & Folly, The Passions of the Baroque
Apollo's Fire Baroque Ensemble
and Meridith Hall, soprano

Music is a form of communication – a language that resonates with people in an emotional and spiritual way, touching people in a way that words cannot. The treatises from the 17th and 18th centuries all talk about “Affekt” – the emotional character of the music. The performer’s role was to evoke a particular Affekt or emotional state in the listeners – whether that be joy or contemplation or rage or despair or triumph. The baroque performer used every possible means to cast his emotional spell on the audience – rhetoric, gesture, harmony. Apollo’s Fire is a collection of artists who believe passionately that our job is to communicate – to take the listeners with us on an emotional journey. If, at the end of two hours, the audience is moved to tears, or joy, or laughter, or prayer, then we have done a good night’s work.

– Jeannette Sorrell

Marco Uccellini, Duo Bergamasca
Dario Castello, Sonata no. 2 for Violin & Continuo
Castello, Sonata Concertante XII
Heinrich Biber, The Annunciation, from the Sonatas
on the Mystery of the Rosary
Antonio Vivaldi, Lunghi dal vago volto
Vivaldi, Agitata da due venti

J.J. Froberger, Tombeau pour M. Blancrocher
René Duchiffre, Sonata Apollonia, for cello & continuo
Barbara Strozzi, Lagrime mia
Luigi Rossi/arr. Sorrell, Lamento d’Euridice
Improvisation, La Folia, variations
Vivaldi, Sonata for Two Violins & continuo, La Folia

Video and much more on the Apollo's Fire website www.apollosfire.org

Watch highlights of Vivaldi's Summer, from The Four Seasons, from the forthcoming PBS television broadcast here

Thursday, March 10, 2011 - 8 p.m.

Mozart, Quintet for Oboe and Strings K. 406 (arranged K. 388)

Curt Cacioppo, "Kinaalda"

Harry Freedman, Trois Poemes de Jacques Prevert for soprano and strings.

Ravel, Piano Trio in A minor

The Mozart work on this concert is not the famous quartet for oboe and strings, but a quintet reduction of a serenade for winds. But the big news on this program is the world premiere of Curt Cacioppo’s Kinaaldá, a work dedicated to Changing Woman, the principal Navajo deity. This completes Cacioppo’s cycle of four string quartets based on Navajo creation legends; the first quartet in the series, A Distant Voice Calling, was premiered at the 2002 Tucson Winter Festival. Canadian composer Harry Freedman was also sometimes inspired by music and stories of indigenous people, but for the settings on this concert he turned to poems by Jacques Prévert, the Billy Collins of mid 20th-century France. From the beginning of the 20th century comes the one standard work on this program, Maurice Ravel’s warm and engaging Piano Trio.

Friday, March 11, 2011 - 8 p.m.

Loeffler, Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola, and Piano

Shostakovich, Piano Trio No. 2 in E minor, Op.67

Joseph Lin, Trio for Strings (World Premiere)

Brahms, String Sextet in G major, Op.36

Imagine a Prussian-American Impressionist, and you’ve got Charles Martin Loeffler, whose one remaining claim to fame is his appealing pair of rhapsodies for the unusual combination of oboe, violin and piano. The more standard violin-cello-piano combo is assembled for one of Dmitri Shostakovich’s most intense chamber works, the second of his two trios. Still another trio configuration—strings only—is featured in a new work by violinist Joseph Lin, a frequent performer in the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival. After all these lean threesomes, Johannes Brahms comes through with a full, Romantic sound in the second of his two string sextets.

Sunday, March 13, 2011 - 3 p.m.

Debussy, String Quartet in G minor. Op.10

Mustonen, Quartet for Piano, Violin, Viola, Oboe (World Première)

Villa Lobos, Suite for voice and violin

Dvořák, Piano Quartet #2 in E flat, Op.87

Olli Mustonen is a pianist of note, but he’s also a composer, and the success of his String Nonet in the 2009 festival led to a commission for a piano quartet featuring an oboe where you’d expect a cello to be. The more traditional configuration of piano and three strings is featured in Antonin Dvořák’s Piano Quartet No. 2, suffused with the rhythms and melodies of his native Bohemia. It’s Brazil that’s evoked in Heitor Villa-Lobos’ suite for voice and violin, while Claude Debussy’s beloved and only string quartet evokes the repressed passions of late 19th-century France.

Special events

Youth concert

Wednesday, March 9, 2011
10:30 - 11-30

A free youth concert at which we give 600 southern Arizona school children the opportunity to see, hear and interact with the same musicians who play for the festival.

Click here for more information about our education and outreach efforts.

Saturday, March 12, 2010

Master Class
Allan Vogel - oboe
3:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.

Master Class
Xak Bjerken - piano
4:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m.

The master classes and open dress rehearsals are free and open to the public. They are held at Leo Rich Theater.

Gala dinner and concert
at the Arizona Inn

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Cocktails - 6:00 p.m., Selections by festival musicians - 7:00 p.m., Dinner - 8:00 p.m.

Schubert, Songs including Ganymed & Der Musensohn
Bach, St. Anne Organ Fugue
Moszkowski, Suite for 2 violins and piano
Lalo Schifrin, "Pampas" for Cello and Piano

Festival Discography
	Visit our Festival Discography page and browse CD's from all our prior Festivals Listen to audio clips and order online! Open our CD sample player here

Our CD from the 2009 Festival

Complete program notes

Complete program notes

Supported by the
Arizona Commission on the Arts

Join us in thanking our corporate sponsors

Complete program notes

Arizona Friends of Chamber Music