2019–2020 Season
The last of the Axelrod Quartet's Museum programs this season opens with Joseph Haydn's Quartet in C Major, Op. 50, No. 2. Béla Bartók's dark and introspective Sixth Quartet, in which at least a portion of each of the four movements is marked Mesto (sad, joyless, or rueful) concludes the first half. After intermission, the prize-winning Omer Quartet joins the Axelrod Quartet for an all-Stradivarius-and-Amati reading of Felix Mendelssohn's youthfully exuberant Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20.
The Axelrod Quartet's Marc Destrubé and Kenneth Slowik present the program that was cancelled during the January 2019 government shutdown: J. S. Bach's Partita in G Major, BWV 829 and Sonata in C Minor, BWV 1017; Joseph Haydn's Sonata in E Minor, Hob. XVI: 34; and the Mozart Sonata in D Major, K306/300l.
The program holds two great Viennese chamber masterworks, Schubert's Quartet in A Minor, D804, which incorporates themes from his Rosamunde ballet music, and Arnold Schönberg's revolutionary Transfigured Night, a tone poem for string sextet illustrating Richard Dehmel's story of raw sensuality and the transformative power of love.
Kenneth Slowik begins the second Schubertiade of the SCMS 2019-20 season with the intimate Moments Musicaux, D780, then plays the stormy Sonata in G Minor, D408 with violinist Mark Fewer. After the interval, three of the SCMS Fellows join the veteran players for the bubbly Trout Quintet. D667.
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra co-concertmaster Elizabeth Blumenstock joins Kenneth Slowik for a Bach-Haydn-Mozart recital.
J.S. Bach: Partita in A Minor, BWV 827; Sonata in E Major, BWV 1016
Joseph Haydn: Sonata in D Major, Hob. XVI: 42
W. A. Mozart: Sonata in G Major, K379
Tonight's program begins with three Mozart sonatas (K318/123a in G major, K497 in F major, and K521 in C major), for which a five-octave instrument will be used. After the interval, Schubert’s Grand Duo, D812, and Four Polonaises, D599, played on a six-and-one-half-octave piano, will round off the gemütlich evening.
For this program, the first in a series of three featuring keyboard and violin, Ian Swensen and Kenneth Slowik have chosen works in the festive key of D Major and its melancholic relative, B minor: Haydn: Sonata in B minor, Hob: XVI:32; J. S. Bach: Partita in D major, BWV 828; Sonata in B minor, BWV 1014; and the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, BWV 1050.
The Axelrod Quartet continues its exploration of Joseph Haydn's Op. 50 with the D Major sixth member of the set, called "the Frog" because of the first violin's bariolage (rapid alternation between strings) that characterizes the last movement. The second of Benjamin Britten's three quartets, which ends with a large-scale Chacony in homage to Henry Purcell, concludes the first half of the program. The first of Beethoven's three ground-breaking Razumovsky (Op. 59) quartets brings the concert to an ebullient close.
The term cantus firmus, particularly associated with medieval and Renaissance music, designates a pre-existing melody that is used as the basis for a new polyphonic composition. The In Nomine melody, taken from the Sarum antiphon Gloria tibi Trinitas, was used by nearly sixty English composers, from John Taverner to Henry Purcell, as the basis of over 150 works. Our program, In Nomine, samples this peculiarly mesmerizing repertoire from Elizabethan times through 1680.
The Axelrod String Quartet opens its 2019-2020 Museum series with Joseph Haydn's Quartet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 50, No. 4. The third of Dmitri Shostakovich's fifteen string quartets, Op. 73 in F Major, concludes the first half of the program. After the intermission, Steven Dann, the ASQ's original violist, joins the group for Mozart's rousing Quintet in E-flat Major, K614.
A program of unusual works written by composers--Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Friedrich Dotzauer, Friedrich Grützmacher, Aleksandr Vasilyevich Kuznetsov, & David Popper--who were themselves cellists, and thus understood well the visceral satisfaction of hearing a multiple-cello ensemble.