Chamber Music Society Presents 45th Season Opening Night Strings Celebration Tonight

By: Oct. 17, 2013
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The 45th season of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center begins with a thrilling display of music for strings tonight, October 17, at 7:30 PM in Alice Tully Hall. This marks the 9th season with Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han, whose enormous success producing and presenting chamber music in New York City, nationally and internationally, has resulted in record-breaking audiences, and a new 7-year contract for them to continue their artistic leadership.

This celebratory opening night event ushers in what David Finckel and Wu Han promise will be "a season packed with great music, performed by extraordinary artists in programs designed to intrigue and delight our diverse and evolving audience of chamber music enthusiasts."

The opening night program, chosen as a season highlight by the New York Times, who stated that CMS will "open its season in luxurious fashion" with this "varied and attractive program," features Mendelssohn's stately Sinfonia No. 13 in C minor; Tchaikovsky's lush Serenade in C major, Op. 48; and Bartók's folk-infused Divertimento, BB 118. The seventeen performers, drawn from a large international and intergenerational roster, include longstanding CMS Artists: violinists Cho-Liang Lin, Ida Kavafian, cellist Steven Tenenbom, and double bassist Kurt Muroki; current CMS Two Artists: violinists Nicolas Dautricourt, Sean Lee, Areta Zhulla; and cellist Mihai Marica; former CMS Two Artists: violinists Kristin Lee, Yura Lee, Arnaud Sussmann; violist Richard O'Neill; cellist Nicholas Canellakis; and Escher String Quartet members violinist Aaron Boyd, violist Pierre Lapointe, and cellistDane Johansen; and guest artist violist Hsin-Yun Huang.

Mendelssohn's Sinfonia No. 13 in C minor (1823) is among the impressive works from the composer's prodigious youth. The one-movement piece evinces a thorough absorption of Bach's florid contrapuntal idiom, and is a recreation of the 18th century French overture, with the stately movement, snapping rhythms and austere mood of the opening succeeded by the driving pace, tightly packed fugal textures and cumulative energy of the closing section.

Tchaikovsky wrote the Serenade in C major, Op. 48 (1880) concurrent with his "very noisy," (his description), 1812 Overture. The latter was written to commemorate the Silver Jubilee of the coronation of Czar Alexander II, a commission the composer said was too important to refuse, but was written "without much warmth or enthusiasm; therefore it has no great artistic value." Switching gears, Tchaikovsky created a delightful work on an intimate scale - the Serenade for Strings, which he said came from "an inward impulse; I felt it deeply and venture to hope that this work is not without artistic qualities." In 1934, George Balanchine used the Serenade in his first ballet choreographed in America, and it remains among his most beloved.

Bartók's Divertimento, BB 118 (1939) reflects a tranquil time-out period for the composer during a frightening political time for eastern Europeans. In the summer of 1939 Bartók accepted a commission, as well as an invitation to visit, from his friend Paul Sacher, the conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra. He retreated into the welcome isolation of the conductor's Swiss chalet and, in fifteen days, completed the Divertimento for Strings, one of his most immediately accessible compositions. The piece does not include the dance forms characteristic of the divertimentos of Mozart's day, though Bartók perhaps meant the title to denote the music's predominantly high-spirited emotional content, or simply the situation in which it was composed.

LISTING INFORMATION:

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at Alice Tully Hall

Thursday, October 17, 7:30 PM

Tickets $70, $54, $37 available at box office; by calling 212.875.5788;

on-line www.ChamberMusicSociety.org

Post-concert reception with the artists in the Grand Foyer: $250 - includes prime concert seat. For information call 212.875.5788.

Opening Night: STRINGS CELEBRATION

Aaron Boyd, Nicolas Dautricourt, Kristin Lee, Sean Lee, Yura Lee, Cho-Liang Lin, Ida Kavafian, Arnaud Sussmann, Areta Zhulla, violin; Hsin-Yun Huang, Pierre Lapointe, Richard O'Neill, Steven Tenenbom, viola; Nicholas Canellakis, Dane Johansen, Mihai Marica, cello; Kurt Muroki, double bass

MENDELSSOHN Sinfonia No. 13 in C minor for Strings (1823)
TCHAIKOVSKY Serenade in C major for Strings, Op. 48 (1880)
BARTÓK Divertimento for Strings, BB 118 (1939)



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