Close Encounters with Music

Mid-Winter Fireside Concerts

February is the time to let passion brighten the winter atmosphere, letting romance warm our souls. Close Encounters with Music will help us transcend the doldrums of late winter in the next month with two concerts filled with emotion and grace.

The first is set for this Saturday at 6PM when CEWM presents Grand Piano Trios—Schubert and Brahms in the historic St. James Place, which was built in 1857 and served Gt. Barrington as an Episcopal church for more than a century-and-a-half before it was converted to a performance center.

“What unites the two trios, apart from celestial melodies, grandeur, joy, mystery and beauty, is that they are both at the heart of Romanticism and reflect the highest achievement of Schubert and Brahms,” said Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani. “To call them epic or transformative pieces is not an overstatement.”

Franz Schubert (1797-1828) wrote two piano trios, both of them masterpieces, both created by a young composer who, at only 31 years old, was nearing the end of his life. His Trio in B-flat major was composed in 1827, a large-scale work with an intimate feel. Schubert worked on it simultaneously with the song cycle, Die Winterreise, perhaps using it as a lighter project to divert his attention from the illness and melancholy that filled his final last months. Sadly, he never heard it performed.

German composer Robert Schumann said, “One glance at Schubert's Trio (Op. 99) and the troubles of our human existence disappear and all the world is fresh and bright again.”

Composers such as Johannes Brahms would go on to write piano trios in a similar, intimate vein. Brahms’ Piano Trio exists in two forms, making it simultaneously one of his earliest and latest works. Its later, rewritten, version is the one most often heard today.

Brahms had already started composing the trio in 1853, when the 20-year-old was introduced to Robert and Clara Schumann. A close friendship developed between the young composer and the Schumanns. Robert Schumann, regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era, did much to advance the younger man’s career.

Schumann, who suffered from mental illness, attempted suicide in the year after their meeting and it is under these circumstances that Brahms completed the Trio in B Major. Some speculate that this affected the composition, altering the emotional trajectory of the piece from its upbeat B Major beginning toward its B-minor conclusion.

Toward the end of his life Brahms changed music publishers and was given the opportunity to revisit some of his earliest works. After performing the new version in 1890, Brahms wrote to a friend, saying, “Do you still remember the B major trio from our early days, and wouldn’t you be curious to hear it now, as I have (instead of placing a wig on it!) taken the hair and combed and ordered it a bit…?” In fact, he had shortened the work by about a third and had substantially rewritten the middle sections of the first, third, and fourth movements.

The works will be performed Saturday by pianist Max Levinson, violinist Peter Zazofsky and cellist Yehuda Hanani.

On March 21st Close Encounters will get us out of the emotional funk of mud and melting snow with The French Connection—Saint-Saëns, Debussy, Fauré, revisiting the greatest period of creativity among French composers as exemplified by the music of Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 1, Debussy’s prophetically daring cello Sonate, Saint-Saëns’ Rondo Capriccioso and Lili Boulanger’s D’un matin de printemps.

The program will be held at the Mahaiwe Theater, also at 6PM.

According to the media release, the mood will be “sensuous, pleasure-oriented, delicately colored and shimmering with élan. Refinement is balanced with brilliant instrumental display in what is one of Fauré’s rare virtuoso pieces, in Saint-Saëns’ violin showpiece and Debussy’s 1918 captivating master work for cello.”

Performers that evening will be Rachel Lee Priday, violin; Dov Scheindlin, viola; Mikael Darmanie, piano, and Yehuda Hanani, cello. In the Close Encounters with Music tradition, each performance is followed by an AFTERGLOW reception, with hors d’oeuvres and wine provided by local restaurants.

Tickets for Grand Piano Trios are $52 and may be obtained online at cewm.org or by calling 800-843-0778. For French Connection tickets ($52/$28/$15) go to www.mahaiwe.org or call phone, 413-528-0100.