Sunday Chamber Music Series continues
at the
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum/ Calderwood Hall
Sunday Afternoon at the ISG:
starts with....
*
A FAR CRY with HELLEN CALLUS, viola
*
* This afternoon’s Program*
The King's Feast
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714 - 1788)
Sinfonia in Bb, Wq. 182 No 2
*
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)
*
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.
~*~*~*~*~*~
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.”
*
For more information and a quick 'listen to'
A FAR CRY
check out U-Tube
9GKM&feature=share&list=UUJwusoaGrNqGvg4CYIzVoXQ
*
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!
Alexander Schimpf has risen to prominence by impressively winning a series of competitions, includidng the 2008 German Music Competition - a distinction no pianist had earned for 14 years-. First Prize at the 2009 International Beethoven Competition in Vienna, and finally emerging as the first German pianist ever to win First Prize at the 2011 Cleveland International Piano Competition. Since winning these notable awards, 
Mr. Schimpf's career has gained momentum with regular appearances at important music centers around the world. Mr. Schimpf made his debut appearance at Carnegie Hall in December 2001and has been performing in the USA frequently since then. 
