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Smithsonian Chamber Music Society

2023-2024 Season

The 47th season of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society features musical masterpieces from the late 16th century to the cusp of the 21st, played on some of the world’s most highly prized musical instruments. Concerts (with the exception of the 28 January Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra evening) take place in the National Museum of American History’s intimate Nicholas and Eugenia Taubman Hall of Music, with repertoire ranging from acclaimed masterpieces to undeservedly obscure gems by less-well-known composers. Veteran musicians of the Society will be joined on several of the programs by emerging artists. Kenneth Slowik, SCMS artistic director and recipient of the Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar Award, will again curate a series of pre-concert talks one hour prior to the Saturday concerts, shedding light on the glorious music and the lives and times of the featured composers. 

The Axelrod String Quartet: Stradivarius and Amati

SMITHSONIAN CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY audiences are privy to the unparalleled experience of being able to hear two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicolò Amati—in this popular three-concert series. The Axelrod Quartet, which now includes violinist Mark Fewer, presents three progams, each of which is anchored by one of Schubert’s last quartets. Works of quartet masters Haydn, Beethoven, and Shostakovich are joined by three 20th-century works related, in their diversity, to varied interests of the National Museum of American History. Much of the music of African-American composer Florence Price was rediscovered only in 2009. Her Quartet in G Major, a work from 1929, recalls the harmonic language of Antonín Dvořák, who prophesized: "In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.” The music of the Argentinian Osvaldo Golijov, resident in the United States since 1986, has been characterized as “forcing us to look and listen in a way that we're not asked to do inside other music, speaking to the divisiveness and coming together of cultures.” The Austrian-American Erich Wolfgang Korngold is probably most widely known for the nearly two dozen Hollywood film scores he wrote in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s (among them The Advertures of Robin Hood, for which he won the Academy Award in 1934), but many of his operas, orchestral and chamber works, songs, and piano music employ the same appealingly kaleidoscopic harmonic palette.

Masterworks of Five Centuries

This series presents three pairs of chamber concerts, plus a chamber orchestra concert. The Smithsonian Consort of Viols will make two appearances. In the first, movements from The Art of Fugue, BWV 1080 will be combined with Bach fugue arrangements by Mozart. The spring program will feature English consort music by Orlando Gibbons and Henry Purcell, whose 1680 fantazias provide a fitting capstone to a venerable tradition. Catherine Manson and Rebecca Landell Reed join the SCMS artistic director in two programs surveying Beethoven piano trios, and in another pairing, Slowik is partnered by violinist Edwin Huizinga, viol player Arnie Tanimoto, and harpsichordist Corey Jamason for sonatas, suites, and trios of J. S. Bach and Jean-Philippe Rameau. The January chamber orchestra concert honors the 150th anniversary of Arnold Schönberg's birth.

For details and dates of the concerts,