American String Quartet To Perform In Cooperstown

The Cooperstown Summer Music Festival will kick off its twentieth anniversary season on Sunday, April 15 with a concert of chamber music masterpieces and new arrangements performed by the renowned American String Quartet and Linda Chesis, flute.

This season-opening concert will take place at 4pm on Sunday, April 15 at the Otesaga Resort Hotel in Cooperstown and offers an opportunity to hear works by Schubert, Debussy and Griffes performed in this beautiful and intimate setting overlooking the lake.

The American String Quartet, frequent guests at the Cooperstown Summer Music Festival, will once again offer audiences a chance to experience world-class music-making in an up close and personal setting.

A highlight of the program will be the world premiere of a new arrangement of Charles Tomlinson Griffes' Poem for flute and string quartet. Linda Chesis, who is also the festival's artistic director and founder, commissioned this arrangement from composer Evan Antonellis with the goal of infusing the piece, which is often performed with flute accompanied only by piano, with the vivid and expressive sound palate of the string quartet. Chesis will join the Americans for the first-ever performance of this new arrangement of Griffes' original piece, which was written 100 years ago this year.

"Poem is a cherished piece in the flute repertoire, and I am so excited to see how this new arrangement brings the piece to life for our audience," Chesis says.

Two contrasting string quartets, Debussy's String Quartet in G minor and Schubert's Quartet No. 14 (known as "Death and the Maiden"), round out the rest of the program. Though very different in sound, both quartets are intensely personal works.

Debussy's quartet is a bold assertion of his compositional style that "startled the audiences - and musicians - of his day," says Dan Avshalomov, the quartet's violist. Today's listeners may likewise be surprised by the exotic sounds that Debussy manages to coax from four very familiar string instruments.

Though composed almost 200 years ago, the dramatic, impassioned writing of Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" continues to move listeners today. Whether they are hearing it for the first or the hundredth time, listeners are invited to experience anew the drama of this beloved work, says Avshalomov. "It is safe to say this piece is performed somewhere on earth every night of the year, and anyone who has yet to hear it will soon find out why."

If that piques your curiosity, don't be shy; Chesis emphasizes all are invited to experience the intimate atmosphere of a live chamber music concert.

"Music is a universal language," says Chesis. "Chamber music offers the possibility of sitting down with complete strangers from anywhere in the world and communicating on a non-verbal level." And that includes the audience.

Tickets are $25 for adults, $15 for students. Purchase online at www.cooperstownmusicfest.org; by phone through Brown Paper Tickets, (800) 838-3006, or at the door. There is no service charge for tickets purchased online or by phone.