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Arizona
Friends
Tucson
Winter |
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Sunday, March 6 Sunday, March 13, 2011
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The Arizona Friends of Chamber Music (AFCM), which has brought nationally and internationally renowned chamber music groups to perform in Tucson for 60 years, is pleased to present the Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival. This world-class musical event has been called one of the best and most adventurous festivals in the US!(American Record Guide), and a jewel of a festival by Chicago classical radio station WFMT.
This year's festival features six concerts, including a performance of Fire & Folly by the Apollo's Fire Baroque Ensemble. As Jeanette Sorrell says, Apollos 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.
The festival also welcomes the Borromeo String Quartet. As Quartet-in-Residence at the prestigious New England Conservatory of Music for seventeen years, the Borromeo have made opening the doors of perception to chamber music their principle mission.
Wednesday features 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. Learn more about our education and community outreach efforts here.
We also have a wonderful gala dinner on Saturday evening at the elegant Arizona Inn, featuring music by our festival performers, along with champagne and dinner. Master classes for University music students are presented on Saturday afternoon. The master classes and open dress rehearsals are free and open to the public.
Arizona Friends of Chamber Music is proud to have one of the country's most active commissioning programs. This year's festival features a premiere performance of an AFCM commission by Olli Mustonen, and a premiere of a trio composed by violinist Joseph Lin. Joseph can be seen performing the premiere of a 2005 AFCM commission by Jeffery Cotton here in the commissioning program section of this website.
Please visit our commissioning program pages, where one can listen to complete performances of our more than 40 commissions, as well as find out much more about the composers and their works. There are still opportunities to join us in supporting the living art of chamber music by sponsoring a new composition.
Our thanks once again go to Peter Rejto, Artistic Director of all our Festivals, who has assembled some of the world's finest musicians and programmed a repertoire both contemporary and classic.
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Tucson
Winter Chamber Music Festival, inside and out Australia's Synergy Percussion Quartet gets standing ovation Winter Chamber Music Fest is best game in town A jewel of a festival, Kerry Frumkin, WFMT/Chicago |
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Festival Musicians |
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Peter Rejto - artistic director |
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Programs
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Open Dress
Rehearsals: 9AM Noon on the day of the concert,
EXCEPT
the initial Sunday
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Sunday,
March 6, 2011 - 3 p.m.
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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. Schumanns 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 composers standards, and even includes an imitation Russian folk song. |
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Tuesday,
March 8, 2011 - 8 p.m.
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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 |
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| 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 nations 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. |
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Wednesday, March 9, 2011 - 8 p.m. |
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Fire
& Folly, The Passions of the Baroque
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Thursday,
March 10, 2011 - 8 p.m.
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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 |
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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 Cacioppos Kinaaldá,
a work dedicated to Changing Woman, the principal Navajo deity. This
completes Cacioppos 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 Ravels warm and engaging Piano
Trio.
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Friday,
March 11, 2011 - 8 p.m.
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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 |
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Imagine
a Prussian-American Impressionist, and youve 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 Shostakovichs most intense chamber works, the second
of his two trios. Still another trio configurationstrings onlyis
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.
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Sunday,
March 13, 2011 - 3 p.m.
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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 hes 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 youd expect a cello to be. The more traditional configuration of piano and three strings is featured in Antonin Dvořáks Piano Quartet No. 2, suffused with the rhythms and melodies of his native Bohemia. Its Brazil thats evoked in Heitor Villa-Lobos suite for voice and violin, while Claude Debussys beloved and only string quartet evokes the repressed passions of late 19th-century France. |
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Special events
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Youth concert Wednesday,
March 9, 2011 |
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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. |
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Saturday, March 12, 2010 |
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Master Class
Master Class
The master classes and open dress rehearsals are free and open to the public. They are held at Leo Rich Theater.
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Gala
dinner and concert Saturday, March 12, 2011 |
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| Festival Discography | |
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Visit
our Festival Discography page and browse CD's from all our prior
Festivals
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Arizona Friends of Chamber MusicP.O.Box 40845, Tucson, AZ 85717 520-577-3769
* For individual
concerts, seats will be assigned 1 month before the Festival. Tickets
will be held at the Will Call window for pickup on the day
of the concert, beginning 90 minutes prior. |
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