MCH Presents US Premiere Of 115-Year-Old Work

Is it possible that a piece of music hailed at its 1905 World Premiere in Vienna as "a beautiful, engrossing work with an appealing lyricism," and composed by one of the city's rising musical stars, has never been played in the U.S.? The internationally-acclaimed Music from Copland House ensemble corrects this 115-year lapse when it gives the American Premiere of Bruno Walter's heroic Piano Quintet on its mainstage series at the historic John Jay Homestead, 400 Jay Street (Route 22), Katonah, NY. The concert, Sounds from the Gilded Age, takes place on Sunday afternoon, March 8, 2020 at 3pm.

Walter's impressive Piano Quintet, a large, four-movement, fin-de-siècle work, ranges widely from heroic to intimate, somber to whimsical, and outgoing to veiled. As Copland House Artistic and Executive Director Michael Boriskin noted, "it was as if we had discovered a fine jewelry box, long-stashed away, containing an exquisite treasure that no one knew existed!" Inhabiting the rhapsodic, late-19th-century expressive world of Mahler, Strauss, and Brahms, the work pointed to a bright future for the 30-year-old composer. But Walter's quickly-burgeoning career as a symphony and opera conductor diverted his attention; his Piano Quintet and other early pieces soon languished and fell into obscurity, and he ultimately went on to become one of the 20th-century's most revered orchestra directors.

Walter's work is paired at this concert with another formidable piano quintet written at almost the same time on this side of the Atlantic, by Amy Beach, one of America's first outstanding and widely-recognized woman composers. A gifted New Englander who overcame late-19th-century social constraints against women becoming professional composers, she eventually produced some 300 works, and gained considerable renown. Her luxurious and grandly passionate Piano Quintet was often lauded as one of her most important and engaging compositions. A landmark of early-20th-century American chamber music, the quintet was performed dozens of times in her lifetime, often with the composer, a brilliant pianist, at the keyboard.
Featured Music from Copland House artists leading this excursion back to the dawn of the 20th-century are violinists Curtis Macomber and Pala Garcia, violist Danielle Farina, cellist Wilhelmina Smith, and pianist Michael Boriskin. Guest speaker Erik Ryding, author of the award-winning Bruno Walter biography, A World Elsewhere, will introduce the program.

Tickets and More Info: Individual tickets: $25, $20 (Friends of Copland House and Friends of John Jay Homestead.) 3-concert subscription: $69, $54 Friends. Includes post-concert meet-the-artists reception
Tickets or information at www.coplandhouse.org/events-and-tickets/, office@coplandhouse.org, or (914) 788-4659.