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.
(This concert is made possible, in part, by support from the Rudyard and Emanuella Reimss Fund of the Westchester Community Foundation.)
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
Media inquiries should be directed to Dworkin & Company at (914) 244-3803,
[email protected]
.
ABOUT MUSIC FROM COPLAND HOUSE
Hailed by
The New York Times
for “all the richness of its offerings” and “illuminating essential truths about the music,” Music from Copland House is the internationally-acclaimed ensemble-in-residence based at Aaron Copland’s National Historic Landmark home, now an award-winning creative center for American music. This country's only wide-ranging American repertory ensemble, journeying across 150 years of the nation’s rich musical landscape, MCH has been featured on
CBS Sunday Morning
, NPR, European Broadcasting Union, and Sirius, and engaged by Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Smithsonian Institution, Library of Congress, Yale and Brandeis Universities, and the Caramoor, Bard, Bowdoin, Ecstatic, SONiC, and Cape Cod Music Festivals, among many others. It has also recorded for the Arabesque, Koch International, and Copland House Blend labels. MCH’s popular mainstage concert series in Westchester County, NY is now in its 11th season, and it has just inaugurated an ambitious new series in Manhattan, in collaboration with The Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Inspired by Copland's peerless, lifelong advocacy of American composers, MCH also presents a wide variety of educational and community outreach activities.
