February 2014 begins.....

Sunday Chamber Music Series continues

at the 

 

Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum/ Calderwood Hall 

 

 

 

Sunday Afternoon at the ISG:
starts with....

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A FAR CRY with HELLEN CALLUS, viola

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* This afternoon’s Program*

The King's Feast

 

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714 - 1788)

Sinfonia in Bb, Wq. 182 No 2

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Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750)

Concert in E-flat Major for Viola, Strings, and Basso continuo

*

Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963)

Trauermusik for Viola and String Orchestra

*

Edward Elgar (1857 - 1934)

Introduction and Allegro for Strings, Op. 47 (1691)

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Henry Purcell (1659 - 1695)

Suite from King Arthur - Z. 628 (1691)

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The self-conducted orchestra “brims with personality or, better, personalities, many and varied.”

A Far Cry  was founded in 2007 by a tightly-knit collective of 17 young professional musicians – the Criers – and since the beginning has fostered those personalities, developing an innovative structure of rotating leadership both on stage and behind the scenes. By expanding the boundaries of orchestral repertoire and experimenting with the ways music is prepared, performed, and experienced, A Far Cry

has been embraced throughout the world with more than two hundred performances, three albums, a powerful presence on the internet, and a European debut tour planned for 2012. The Criers are proud to call Boston home, and maintain strong roots in the city rehearsing at their storefront music center in Jamaica Plain and fulfilling

the role of Chamber Orchestra in Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Collaborating with local students through an educational partnership with the New England Conservatory, A Far Cry aims to pass on the spirit of collaboratively-empowered music to the next generation.

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HELLEN CALLUS

Helen Callus, hailed as “one of the world’s greatest violists” (American Record Guide), “a violist of the highest caliber” (Strings magazine), and “one of the foremost violists of her generation” (Fanfare magazine), continues to captivate audiences with her lyrical tone, technical command, and profound artistry. Sought after as a recitalist, chamber musician, and concerto soloist, Ms. Callus has performed with such world-class ensembles as the Tokyo and Juilliard String Quartets and the BBC Concert Orchestra. She is described by The Seattle Times as “a player with impeccable sensibilities and a beautiful sound, infinitely malleable into all kinds of musical subtleties.” The American Record Guide observed that “her playing is so deeply felt [that] the music’s message goes straight to the heart.”

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For more information and a quick 'listen to'
A FAR CRY

check out U-Tube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV5CGc-

9GKM&feature=share&list=UUJwusoaGrNqGvg4CYIzVoXQ

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Calderwood Hall info.

The new Calderwood Hall is replacing the Tapestry Gallery as the site for concerts.

Calderwood Hall, designed by Renzo Piano and Yasuhisa Toyota, is built into a cube 44 feet on a side. Two rows of audience surround the musicians on the floor. The rest of the seating is in three tiers of four-sided balconies – each only one row deep. Seating capacity is approximately 300

The musicians are on the floor, and the audience surrounds them, as close as is practically possible.

The design of the Calderwood is unusual for our time, but it is not historically unprecedented. Most chamber music was written for performance in small spaces – holding at most a few hundred people, and richly supplied with sound absorbing furniture and fabric.

In the Calderwood the goal was to make the sound for each audience member as uniform as possible, giving each both a sonic and visual unobstructed view of the performance. When BMInt visited in December the reverberation time was quite low – about half a second. It is not obvious why the room was so absorptive. The visual walls are made of decorative plywood cut with linear slits. Eighteen inches behind the slits there is a structural wall. There were absorptive curtains in the space between the visual and the structural wall.

* And ends with....

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So – how does the new hall sound? Short answer:

It sounds

Fantastic!