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WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – In a program designed to celebrate the rich diversity of Baroque music—the complexity of the intellectual Northern Baroque and its counterpoint, the more outgoing Mediterranean sensibility—celebrated cellist Yehuda Hanani performs one of the incomparable unaccompanied Bach suites, displaying the composer’s depth, boldness and innovation and virtuoso pianist Lydia Artymiw dazzles with Scarlatti miniature keyboard gems. The two join forces in performances of Vivaldi and Boccherini sonatas and a new composition in neo-Baroque style by Williamstown composer Steven Dankner is to receive its world premiere.

The 4 PM Sunday, August 3 performance, “Masters of the Baroque,” also celebrates the grand reopening of The Clark following major renovations. “We are delighted to be part of the expansion and new vision of the Clark,” says artistic director Yehuda Hanani. “Being surrounded by the large and varied collection is bound to spark new revelations about the synchronicities between the ‘bow and the brush.’”

Based in Great Barrington and in its 23rd year in the Berkshires, Close Encounters has enjoyed collaborations with museums across the country, including the Detroit Institute of Art, the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, the Phoenix Art Museum, the Center for Fine Arts in Miami, and the Frick Collection in New York City. Often centering programs on an art movement, or commonalities between the visual and the acoustic, CEWM’s thematic programming brings a heightened sense of discovery to the concert experience.

From the mercurial keyboard music of Baroque-era Domenico Scarlatti, to Luigi Boccherini’s luscious string writing and the exuberance of Antonio Vivaldi, “Masters of the Baroque” presents a panorama of the ornate and exquisitely ornamented works that exemplify the period of the Late Baroque, also in art and architecture. J.S. Bach represents the apotheosis of this fusion, and at the same transcends the period. Yehuda Hanani is especially sought after as an interpreter and elucidator of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and his recording of the six unaccompanied suites has been critically hailed for its personal relationship with the score. From 1995-2007 he directed the International Bach”Annalia” Festival at the University of Cincinnati.

The recipient of an Avery Fisher Career Grant, and top-prize winner of the prestigious Leventritt and Leeds International Competitions, Philadelphia-born Lydia Artymiw has performed with over one hundred orchestras world-wide, with many of the leading conductors of our time. American orchestral appearances include the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the National Symphony. Festival appearances include Aspen, Bravo! Vail Valley, Caramoor, Chamber Music Northwest, Chautauqua, Hollywood Bowl, Montreal, and Mostly Mozart.

Tickets for “Masters of the Baroque” are $40 ($30 members). Visit clarkart.edu or call 413- 458-0524 for information or to order tickets.
Set amidst 140 acres in the Berkshires, the Clark is one of the few major art museums that also serves as a leading international center for research and scholarship. The Clark presents public and education programs and organizes groundbreaking exhibitions that advance new scholarship. The Clark’s research and academic programs include an international fellowship program and conferences. Together with Williams College, the Clark sponsors one of the nation’s leading master’s programs in art history. The Clark receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

The Clark is located at 225 South Street in Williamstown, Massachusetts. The galleries are open daily in July and August (open Tuesday through Sunday from September through June), 10 am to 5 pm.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Yehuda Hanani’s charismatic playing and profound interpretations bring him acclaim and reengagements across the globe. An extraordinary recitalist, he is equally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Irish National Symphony, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Honolulu Symphony, Orquestra Sinfonica del Estado de Mexico, Belgrade Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, and Taipei and Seoul symphonies, among many others. His pioneering recording of the monumental Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination, and his other discs have won wide recognition. He has been the subject of hundreds of articles and interviews in the media, and his weekly program on NPR affiliate station WAMC Northeast Radio, “Classical Music According to Yehuda” attracts new audiences to classical music. He is Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and artistic director of Close Encounters With Music and the Catskill High Peaks Festival.

“One of the most polished performers of the post-Starker generation and a consistently expressive artist…The sonatas came bounding to life in vital interpretations rich in imaginative detail and virile strength. Mr. Hanani was rightly rewarded with cheers from the audience.” –The New York Times

“Native Israeli cellist Yehuda Hanani…studied with Leonard Rose at Juilliard and with Pablo Casals. It should come as no surprise then that he possesses Rose’s tonal amplitude and Casals’s intellectual discipline, breathtaking technique and limpid style….Commanding musicianship.” – Fanfare Magazine (January/February 2012)

Lydia Artymiw is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 1989 Andrew Wolf Chamber Music Award and the 1987 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and she has garnered top prizes in major competitions such as the Leeds International in England and the Leventritt in New York. A major recording artist, her seven solo albums for the Chandos label in England have been critically acclaimed; her record “Variations” was a Gramophone Magazine “Critic’s Choice” and “Best of the Year” disc; she was featured on the cover of Gramophone Magazine for the release of her Schumann record; her Mendelssohn record was hailed by Hi-Fi News and the Monthly Guide to Recorded Music as “Best of the Month”; and Ovation Magazine honored her Schubert recording as “Recording of Distinction.” Her Tchaikovsky Seasons (released by Chandos in 1982) is still in print and has sold over 40,000 copies.

Lydia Artymiw is important because she combines so many diverse qualities in such easily managed proportions. She is authoritative in many styles; she wields power and delicacy with equal ease; she is securely equipped with technique; she feels deeply and knows how to communicate her feelings. She stirred her audience repeatedly. –Los Angeles Times

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC PRESENTS
A SUMMER CALENDAR IN THE BERKSHIRES AND CATSKILLS:

Friday, August 15; 6pm
Music From the High Peaks to Olana’s Orchard
Olana’s Orchards/Barn Complex
$30/person, $25/members
Renowned faculty and international rising young artists perform in Olana’s orchard in an exuberant display of virtuosity and talent. Various chamber music combinations include cello chorus, solo and duo piano, quartets, sextets, and the High Peaks Festival Orchestra in Vivaldi’s Double Violin Concerto, Gershwin, and more. This rare opportunity to see a grand piano performance in the orchards at Olana is something that you do not want to miss! Wine and cheese reception near the orchard at Olana will follow the performance. Advanced registration is requested. Register by Wednesday, August 13 to 518-828-1872 x 109 or [email protected].

Monday, August 18; 5:30pm
Music From the High Peaks
to the Norman Rockwell Museum
Renowned faculty and international young artists will perform chamber music, and the High Peaks Festival Orchestra will present Grieg’s Holberg Suite in an exuberant display of virtuosity and talent, plus selections from Arvo Pärt, Brahms, Vivaldi.
A reception follows the performance. Free with Museum admission, free for members.

Catskill High Peaks Festival: August 10-20
The Catskill High Peaks Festival is a performing and teaching arm of Close Encounters With Music. A summer institute bringing together renowned musicians, pedagogues and exceptionally gifted international students together, it is held in the majestic Northern Catskill Mountains. Surrounded by the iconic scenery – mountain peaks, water falls and charming hamlets – that inspired the Hudson River painters, and that continues to inspire generations of artists, musicians and writer the intimate scale and highest level of talent make possible an invigorating ten days of discovery, exploration, bonding, and growth. The festival has an all-inclusive atmosphere, fostering camaraderie and cross-cultural exchange and understanding. The faculty is similarly international. In past summers, the music has focused on traditions ranging from Latin American tango to Japanese ceremonial drums to the heritage of Jazz and improvisation in addition to the classical canon. Central to the festival’s mission are performance opportunities for young artists on the cusp of their careers. Faculty and guest performers have included the most respected classical musicians of our time: guitarist Eliot Fisk; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Ara Gergorian and Stefan Milenkovich; pianists James Tocco, Michael Chertock, and Vassily Primakov and cellist Yehuda Hanani.

Catskills High Peaks Flyer

HUNTER, New York — “The Grand Italian Tour” is the theme of the fifth edition of the Catskill High Peaks Festival: Music with Altitude!, hosted by the Catskill Mountain Foundation, August 10–20 and presented by Close Encounters With Music, the Berkshire-based chamber music organization.

The ten-day chamber music festival, directed by internationally acclaimed cellist Yehuda Hanani, offers a combination of concerts, lectures, film and master classes, open to the public and featuring distinguished faculty artists and outstanding young musicians from around the world. Festival events will take place at the newly restored Orpheum Theater in Tannersville, NY and the Doctorow Center for the Arts in Hunter as well as additional locations in the Hudson Valley and Berkshires.

“We are committed to bringing the very best artists and leading pedagogues to continue this new musical tradition, here in the breathtaking environment that inspired the Hudson River School painters and generations of artists since,” says Hanani. Guest performers include Elmar Oliveira, Gold-Medal winner of Moscow’s prestigious Tchaikovsky International Competition, the only American violinist to ever capture the award and Axel Strauss, Enescu and Naumburg prize winner and guest concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic.

The centerpieces of the festival are two concerts devoted to Italy as the mother lode of musical culture. “Years of Pilgrimage,” Sunday, August 10 at 2 pm at the Doctorow Center for the Arts, traverses two centuries of Italian brilliance and demonstrates how it inspired its famous tourists (Mendelssohn, Byron, etc.). This concert showcases selections from the mercurial keyboard music of Baroque-era Domenico Scarlatti, to Luigi Boccherini’s luscious string works, the humor and exuberance of Rossini, the virtuosity of Paganini, and the genius of Verdi. Performing with Yehuda Hanani on cello and Michael Chertock on piano, Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Lucille Beer sings favorite coloratura arias that typify the bravura of Italian vocal tradition.

The major work of the second concert, “Souvenir de Florence,” Sunday, August 17 at 2 pm at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center, is Tchaikovsky’s own musical souvenir of his visit to Italy as he recovered from a disastrous marriage and developed an infatuation with the city that spawned the Renaissance. Florence worked its magic on Tchaikovsky, and the result is one of the most delightful and charming pieces in the repertory, for string sextet. Stravinsky was similarly stricken, and wrote his quasi-baroque Suite Italienne for Diaghilev and the Ballet Russe. The Valentini cello sonata offers a high quotient of virtuosic verve, and the Boccherini Quintet holds familiar moments from the cinema. No Italian showcase would be complete without Vivaldi’s Double Concerto for two violins, which features eminent guests Elmar Oliveira and Axel Strauss. Other performers are violist Amadi Azikiwe; cellists Yehuda Hanani and Thomas Landschoot; pianist Michael Chertock, as well as the High Peaks Festival Chamber Orchestra.

Throughout the festival, a range of venues will host performances by talented up-and-coming musicians participating in the festival’s residency for young artists, providing audiences with an opportunity to catch a glimpse of some of the classical music world’s future stars. These include a concert of cello chorus (with 20 cellists!), string quartets, quintets and sextets and the Festival Orchestra on Monday, August 18, 5:30 PM at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA, and a “Stars of Tomorrow” performance at the historic Olana Estate in Hudson, NY, Friday, August 15 at sunset. A series of “Moonlight Sonatas” performances featuring top-tier young artists at the Doctorow Center in Hunter and in Tannersville will be free and open to the public.

The festival also offers a series of illuminating talks. Marking the Verdi bicentennial, Opera News contributor, architect and film-maker August Ventura presents “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi” on Friday, August 15 at 2 PM in the Doctorow Center for the Arts. Ventura has been producing and directing an independent, feature-length documentary that captures the composer’s political and cultural relevance, shedding light on how the operas promoted the notion of a unified Italy and helped define her national character.

“Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism,” tracing Beethoven’s pathway from disciple of Haydn, from whom he inherited his audacity and humor, to prophet and hero of the Romantic Movement, is presented on Saturday, August 16 at 2 PM at the Doctorow Center. His music stands as a glorious bridge between two eras—classical and romantic—and selected examples will be played (live with Yehuda Hanani and Michael Chertock, and from recorded performances) to cover a good distance of this journey. A “Meet the Artists” afternoon will take place at the Onteora Library, and free classes and workshops will be offered each day, including a talk by Woodstock luthier David Wiebe on “Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati—Why Italy?”. For a full schedule of events, visit www.catskillhighpeaksmusic.org . Catskill High Peaks Festival is presented by Close Encounters With Music, the thematic chamber music series based in Great Barrington, MA, and hosted by the Catskill Mountain Foundation.

Ticket information for “Years of Pilgrimage” and “Souvenir de Florence”

Advance tickets: $25; seniors, $18; students, $7

Tickets purchased at the door: $30; seniors, $22; students, $7.

Information about “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi,” “Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism, free master classes, Stars of Tomorrow concerts and Tea & Talk: www.catskillhighpeaksmusic.org or 518-392-6677.

MORE ABOUT THE FESTIVAL

The Catskill High Peaks Festival is a performing and teaching summer institute bringing together renowned musicians, pedagogues and exceptionally gifted international students. It is held in the majestic Northern Catskill Mountains, surrounded by the iconic scenery – mountain peaks, water falls and charming hamlets – that inspired the Hudson River painters, and that continues to inspire generations of artists, musicians and writers. The intimate scale and highest level of talent make possible an invigorating ten days of discovery, exploration, bonding, and growth. The festival has an all-inclusive atmosphere, fostering camaraderie and cross-cultural exchange and understanding. The faculty is similarly international. In past summers, the music has focused on traditions ranging from Latin American tango to Japanese ceremonial drums to the heritage of Jazz and improvisation in addition to the classical canon. Central to the festival’s mission are performance opportunities for young artists on the cusp of their careers. Faculty and guest performers have included the most respected classical musicians of our time: guitarist Eliot Fisk; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Ara Gergorian and Stefan Milenkovich; pianists James Tocco, Michael Chertock, and Vassily Primakov and cellist Yehuda Hanani.

Catskill High Peaks Festival Artistic Director YEHUDA HANANI has received acclaim across the globe for his charismatic playing and profound interpretations. An extraordinary recitalist, he is equally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Buenos Aires Philharmonic, Irish National Symphony, Honolulu Symphony, Seoul Symphony, and BBC Welsh Symphony. His engaging chamber music with commentary series, Close Encounters With Music, has captivated audiences from Miami to Kansas City, Omaha, Calgary, Scottsdale, the Berkshires, and at the Frick Collection in New York City. He has been the subject of hundreds of articles and interviews in the media, and his weekly program on NPR affiliate station WAMC Northeast Radio, “Classical Music According to Yehuda” attracts thousands of fans. A prolific recording artist, he is Professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Photographs of the Performing Musicians

“In the art and music of Romanticism—whether Turner’s misty sea and landscapes, Delacroix’s violent scenes, or Beethoven’s stormy musical mood swings—all of nature is a mirror of the turmoil, longing, passion and sorrows that take place in the bosom of the artist,” says Yehuda Hanani, artistic director of Close Encounters With Music. “The deaf composer forced to listen inwardly in isolation, overcoming the blows of fate and turning adversity into triumph have made Beethoven an ideal model for the Romantic artist.”

The May 17 Close Encounters concert follows Beethoven, perhaps the most lionized of Western artists—in his pathway from disciple of Haydn, from whom he inherited his audacity and humor, to prophet and hero of the Romantic Movement. His music stands as a glorious bridge between two eras—Classical and Romantic—and the selected works cover a good distance of this journey.

Starting as a young artist working within the forms of his day, Beethoven’s transitional moment comes with the rarely heard String quintet Opus 29 (poking fun at Rossini, among other antics) as it points the way to his middle period. The sonata for piano and violin, known as the Kreutzer, Opus 47, further breaks with convention in a powerful duet of torrid emotion. The piece was dedicated to violin virtuoso Rudolphe Kreutzer who deemed it unplayable and in fact never performed it. The Archduke Trio, Opus 97 represents the pinnacle of his writing in that genre, perhaps in this late period.

Distinguished performers for this program—which reveals Beethoven as both bridge and boundary breaker—are Yehonatan Berick and Joana Genova, violin; Amadi Azikiwe and Ariel Rudiakov, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello; and Jeffrey Swann, piano.

Ticket Information for “Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism”
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; or through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778/ www.cewm.org.

Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Photographs of Performing Artists

LENOX, Mass. – With representative works from many of the genres in which he wrote—piano quintet, piano trio, song cycles, and opera, and always with his trademark captivating melodiousness and soulfulness—audiences at the Close Encounters With Music all-Dvořák gala concert, Sunday, June 15 at 2 PM will take away a composite portrait of the composer as an original and independent force in classical music. The program will also illustrate how the irresistible charm and mastery of Dvořák’s compositions helped bridge the world of popular musical culture with that of the 19th century concert hall.

The gallery of scheduled works includes two of his greatest and most dazzling chamber pieces—the “Dumky” Trio and the Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, both incorporating pensive Slavonic music (Dumka), Czech folk dances, and glowing with Dvořák’s optimism, rhythmic vitality and intoxicating beauty. The “Dumky” was so well received at its premiere that it was presented on a forty-concert tour, just before Dvořák left Bohemia to head the National Conservatory of Music in New York City. It was published while Dvořák was in America and proofread by none other than his friend, Johannes Brahms. The Piano Quintet is acknowledged as one of the masterpieces in the form, along with those of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms and Shostakovich.

A stellar assemblage of instrumentalists includes violinist Itamar Zorman, first prize winner of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Competition and 2013 Avery Fisher Award; pianist Roman Rabinovich, first prize winner of the Arthur Rubinstein International Competition; violinist David McCarroll; violist Ara Gregorian; and CEWM founder and artistic director, cellist Yehuda Hanani.

Adding a vocal dimension to the Dvořák portrait, special guest mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor makes her Berkshire debut singing Dvořák’s rarely heard Biblical Songs, the Gypsy Songs, and “Song to the Moon,” from the opera Rusalka. O’Connor’s impressive calendar this season has included John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary with Grant Gershon conducting the Ravinia Festival Orchestra; the world premiere of John Harbison’s Crossroads with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with Alan Gilbert and the New York Philharmonic; an international tour with Franz Welser-Möst and the Cleveland Orchestra, as well as performances with the San Francisco Symphony under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas, and Vladimir Jurowski and the London Philharmonic Orchestra.

The cycle of Biblical Songs was composed in 1894. Following a personal crisis, with the death of two dear friends (Tchaikovsky and conductor Hans von Bulow) and with the news of the terminal illness of Dvořák’s own father, the deeply religious composer sought comfort in his faith. He selected verses from the book of Psalms, and produced some of his most spiritual music. “Songs my mother taught me” from the Gypsy Songs, and “Song of the Moon” from his fairy-tale opera Rusalka are among the most beloved of vocal works.

“The Many Faces of Antonin Dvořák” is scheduled for Sunday, June 15, 2 PM at Ozawa Hall, Tanglewood (Lenox, MA). Tickets for this extraordinary concert are $40 and $50. A limited number of Preferred Patron Seating and Gala Reception Packages are available at $125 per person. For more information or to order tickets, visit www.cewm.org or call (800) 843-0778.
PLEASE NOTE CHANGE OF DATE AND TIME.

MORE ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Yehuda Hanani is internationally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Irish National Symphony and many others. He has been a guest at Aspen, Chautauqua, Marlboro, Yale at Norfolk, Round Top (TX), Blue Hill, Bowdoin, Great Lakes, Ottawa Festival and Finland Festival, among many others, and has collaborated with fellow musicians including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Yefim Bronfman, Eliot Fisk, and the Emerson and Tokyo quartets. In New York City, Yehuda Hanani has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully, The Frick, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rodger Auditorium. A prolific recording artist, his pioneering recording of the Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination. As founder and artistic director of Close Encounters With Music, he has been at the forefront of presenting thematic concerts with commentary in cities across the U.S. He is professor of Cello at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and artistic director of the Catskill High Peaks Festival in Hunter and Tannersville, NY.

Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Kelley O’Connor is taking the music world by storm! The California native’s recent engagements have included appearances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic under the baton of music director Gustav Dudamel; a debut as Suzuki in a new production of Madama Butterfly by Lillian Groag at Boston Lyric Opera; Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs with both Christoph Eschenbach and the National Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra; Debussy’s La Damoiselle élue with Donald Runnicles and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with David Robertson and the Saint Louis Symphony; Manfred Honeck and the Pittsburgh Symphony, Louis Langrée and the Cincinnati Symphony, and Lieberson’s The World in Flower with Grant Gershon and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. Ms. O’Connor brought her “smoky sound and riveting stage presence” (The New York Times) to performances of Berlioz’s Béatrice et Bénedict with Opera Boston, and to her signature role as Federico Garcia Lorca in a Peter Sellars staging of Golijov’s Ainadamar at Teatro Real in Madrid. She has performed in festivals, including the London Proms, Colorado Music Festival, Edinburgh International Festival, and the Berlin Festival, among others.

Twenty-eight year old Israeli pianist Roman Rabinovich is winner of the 2008 Arthur Rubinstein International Piano Master Competition in Israel. Praised by critics for “vivacity and virtuosity” and his “impeccable clarity of execution,” he has performed throughout the United States, Europe and Israel in such prestigious venues as Leipzig’s Gewandhaus, Wigmore Hall, Lucerne and Davos festivals in Switzerland, Carnegie’s Zankel Hall, the Metropolitan and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museums, the Great Hall of Moscow Conservatory and Glazunov Hall in St. Petersburg, Vienna’s Musikverein, as well as Jordan Hall in Boston, the Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concert Series in Chicago, Les Invalides in Paris and the Millennium Stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Born in Uzbekistan, Mr. Rabinovich immigrated to Israel where he studied at the Rubin Academy of Music, making his Israel Philharmonic Orchestra debut under the baton of Zubin Mehta at age ten. A graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music and with a Masters Degree from Juilliard, he also excels as an artist, often combining concerts with exhibitions of his paintings.

Violinist Itamar Zorman is winner of the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Russia, where he subsequently performed in the winners’ concerts with Maestro Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra. In 2013, he was named a winner of the Avery Fisher Prize. Mr. Zorman has performed as a soloist with the American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, with the Juilliard Orchestra at Avery Fisher Hall, the Het Gelders Orkest at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and with the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, Jerusalem Symphony, Philharmonie Baden-Baden, and Polish Radio Chamber Orchestra. As a chamber musician, he has appeared at Lincoln Center, in Zankel Hall and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, and at the Kennedy Center. Born in Tel Aviv to a family of musicians, he holds a Bachelor’s degree from the Jerusalem Academy of Music, a Master’s degree from The Juilliard School and Artist Diplomas from Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard. He plays on a 1737 Pietro Guarneri violin from a private collection.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Photograph of August Ventura

Close Encounters With Music presents “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi” the second installment in this season’s “Conversations With…” series Sunday, April 6, 3 PM at the historic Lenox Club. Lifelong opera-lover, author, architect and film-maker August Venutra has written extensively on Giuesppe Verdi for II Giornalino di Parma Lirica and Opera News, focusing on the relationship Verdi’s home town of Parma maintains with the maestro’s legacy.

For the past several years Ventura has been producing and directing an independent, feature-length documentary on this subject entitled “27,” in which Parma’s legendary Teatro Regio and the “Club of 27” (representing Verdi’s twenty-seven operas and limited exclusively to twenty-seven members at any given time!) figure prominently. Marking the Verdi bicentennial, the talk and film sequences capture his political and cultural relevance, shedding light on how the operas promoted the notion of a unified Italy and helped define her national character.

Parenthetically, Ventura could star in his own film as Verdi, as he is his virtual look-alike, which perhaps ignited his passionate pursuit of all things Verdi! The Gilded Age-era Lenox Club is located at 111 Yokun Avenue in Lenox, MA.

“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi” is part of a series of intimate and stimulating conversations about music and ideas, an intrinsic part of the Close Encounters With Music season. “Conversations With…” has presented such notable speakers as writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim fellow Judith Zaimont; pianist-authors Walter Ponce and Adam Neiman; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s book author R.O. Blechman; art restorer David Bull; Academy Award nominee Daniel Anker; scholar, performer and multimedia artist Robert Winter; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; and award-winning poet Charles Coe.

Ticket Information for “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi”
Admission is $15 and includes light refreshment. To purchase tickets, visit www.cewm.org. For further information: 800-843-0778 or [email protected]. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.


Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Photographs of the Performing Artists

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. —Musical fireworks, passion, and vertiginous speed are hallmarks of Hungarian and Gypsy music. From the cimbalom, the national folk instrument of Hungary, to the sophistication of Liszt’s fiery “Rhapsody” and Brahms’s majestic Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, selections on the April 27 Close Encounters With Music concert reflect the cadences and rhythm of Hungarian speech—and the paprika that spices up its cuisine.

The stage is set with a bravura performance on the folk hammered dulcimer (cimbalom) by Hungarian-trained Cosmo Gorsci. Béla Bartók’s 1938 “Contrasts for Clarinet, Violin and Piano,” commissioned by jazz legend Benny Goodman, is an amalgam of abstracted Hungarian folk music combined with Romanian dance melodies. It’s a study in contrasts: the tone and color of the three different instruments, different musical idioms, and jazz and classical modes. Both violist and clarinetist require two instruments apiece to capture the dual character and the disparate tunings—gritty country fiddle-atmosphere with barbaric energy, dances, and syncopations, and the concert-worthy brilliant passage work and polish. Also on the program is another Hungarian “Rhapsody,” a virtuosic work for cello and piano by David Popper, a famous 19th century cellist. It concludes with Brahms’s torrentially romantic piano trio with its Magyar themes.

Guest artists joining artistic director Yehuda Hanani are Erin Keefe, concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra and winner of the 2006 Avery Fisher Career Grant, who appears regularly at Lincoln and has been featured on “Live From Lincoln Center” broadcasts; Alexander Fiterstein, one of today’s top-tier clarinet players and winner of a 2009 Avery Fisher Career Grant Award (“beautiful liquid clarity—“ New York Times); and pianist Lydia Artymiw, another Avery Fisher Award winner who has performed with over one hundred orchestras worldwide, including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and the National Symphony.

Roma performer Cosmo Gorsci will demonstrate the expressive and haunting qualities of the cimbalom in traditional Magyar melodies, as well as its visual beauty. With its horizontal strings, two beaters, and tremolo sound, the cimbalom’s special effect—familiar to concert audiences from Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly’s opera Hary Jano— is used in film to evoke mystery and intrigue.

Ticket Information for MAGYAR!
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. Visit www.cewm.org. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Photograph of the Linden String Quartet

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Standouts in a chamber music landscape that is populated by exceptional young string quartets, the Linden has been heard at festivals from Ravinia to Caramoor, Banff, and the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, and at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Hall, collecting honors and prizes along the way. In their Berkshire debut performance, the brilliant and dynamic Linden Quartet (“Fire and Flare” –The Strad) will be heard on Saturday, March 22 at 6PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center in an intensely passionate, lyrical and utterly winning program.

The centerpiece is Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, written for a St. Petersburg chamber music society as a musical souvenir of his visit to Italy as he recovered from a disastrous marriage and developed an infatuation with the city that spawned the Renaissance. Florence worked its magic on Tchaikovsky, and the result is one of the most delightful and charming pieces in the repertory, for string sextet. Cellist and artistic director Yehuda Hanani and French violist Pierre-Henri Xuereb join the Linden for this work.

The Linden Quartet will also offer Felix Mendelssohn’s Quartet opus 13 in A minor and Tchaikovsky’s popular Andante Cantabile. Richly romantic, and notable for its uplifting and optimistic spirit, outpouring of sheer beauty and belief in a bright future, the Mendelssohn quartet, written when the composer was 18, recalls the overture to the incidental music to A Midsummer’s Night Dream, at the same time offering a tribute to Beethoven by modeling itself on his late quartets. One of Tchaikovsky’s most successful compositions, the Andante Cantabile, first performed in a quartet concert honoring Leo Tolstoy, and has been rewritten for many other instrumental combination.

Ticket Information for “An Evening with the Linden Quartet
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. A four-concert subscription is available for $140/ $120 for seniors. Visit www.cewm.org. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org. For your listening pleasure here is a YouTube of the Linden String Quartet performing Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major. www.YouTube.com

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Photograph of Guzman and Yoffe

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — In technique and sensibility, violinist Vadim Gluzman harkens back to the Golden Age of violinists of the 19th and 20th centuries, while demonstrating the passion and energy of the 21st century. Lauded by both critics and audiences as a performer of depth, virtuosity and technical brilliance, he has appeared throughout the world as a soloist and in a duo setting with his wife, pianist Angela Yoffe. Gluzman’s warm tone, developed out of his miraculous “ex-Leopold Auer” Strad (on which the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto was premiered!) takes its inspiration from the timeless examples of Mischa Elman, Nathan Milstein and David Oistrakh. A legendary violin in the hands of a master, and a dazzling holiday program with music of Mozart, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev and Castelnuovo-Tedesco will be heard on Saturday, December 21, at 6PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center with Angela Yoffe as his chamber music partner.

Gluzman’s extraordinary artistry both sustains the great violin tradition of the 19th and 20th centuries and enlivens it with the dynamism of today. A recent music critic captured the singular quality of his approach to violin playing: “Most remarkable was his ability to sustain Tchaikovsky’s romantic emotionalism without falling into vibrato-drenched clichés,” wrote Chris Waddington of New Orlean’s Times-Picayune. “Gluzman did it by unleashing an astounding palette of colors from his violin: a golden hive-like droning, finger-snap pizzicatos, and a plunging dive-bomber wail that had me thinking of klezmer—and of Jimi Hendrix calling down fire from heaven in ‘Machine Gun.’” He goes on to say, “For folks who prefer the classics, I’d sum up Gluzman this way: He is better than Itzhak Perlman, better than Midori, better than Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg and all the other big-name string titans who have soloed with the LPO [Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra] in recent years.”

Gluzman maintains a dizzying international schedule: Within a mere six months, he will have performed with the Austin, Buffalo, Atlanta, and Columbus symphonies in the U.S.; the Russian National Philharmonic in Moscow, Orquestra Sinfoica do Parana in Brazil; Orchestra National de Lyon, in Sofia Bulgaria, with the Residendtie Orchestra in The Hague, the Yomiuri Nippon Symphony in Japan, and back to solo with the Louisiana Symphony. On Novmber 18 he performs at a Holocaust Memorial Concert marking the 70th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising at Théatre des Champs Elysées.

Ticket Information for “The Miraculous Violin—An evening with Vadim Gluzman and Angela Yoffe”
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. Subscriptions are $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 6 concerts, and include a free subscribers-only exclusive event. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Vadim Gluzman, an Israeli violinist appears regularly around the world: with major orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, London Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, London Symphony, Leipzig Gewandhaus, Munich Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra and NHK Symphony; and with leading conductors including Neeme Järvi, Michael Tilson Thomas, Marek Janowski, and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos. Among his festival appearances are Verbier, Ravinia, Lockenhaus, Pablo Casals, Colmar, Jerusalem and the North Shore Chamber Music Festival in Northbrook, Illinois, founded by Gluzman with his wife and long-standing recital partner, pianist Angela Yoffe. This season Gluzman begins a collaboration with the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra in Columbus, Ohio, in the position of Creative Partner and Principal Guest Artist. Born in the former Soviet Union, Gluzman began violin studies at the age of seven before moving to Israel, where he was a student of Yair Kless. In the US he studied at the Juilliard School under Dorothy DeLay and Masao Kawasaki. Early in his career, Mr. Gluzman enjoyed the encouragement and support of Isaac Stern, and was awarded the prestigious Henryk Szeryng Foundation Career Award in 1994. He plays the extraordinary 1690 ‘ex-Leopold Auer’ Stradivari, on extended loan to him through the generosity of the Stradivari Society of Chicago.

Admired for her outstanding musicianship, extraordinary sensitivity and virtuosity, pianist Angela Yoffe has performed in the concert halls of United States, Europe, Japan and Canada. Ms. Yoffe was born in Riga, Latvia where she began her musical training, later immigrating to Israel, where she studied with Victor Derevianko in Tel-Aviv. She continued her studies in the U.S. at Southern Methodist University. She has been a piano assistant in the violin studio of Ms. Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School, where she studied chamber music with Jonathan Feldman. As a chamber musician and recitalist, Angela Yoffe has performed in New York, Washington, Chicago, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris, Geneva, Rome and Tokyo. She has also appeared with the Seattle Symphony, the Omaha Symphony, SWR Stuttgart Radio Orchestra, Hamburg Symphony and with New York’s Jupiter Symphony under the batons of Andrey Boreyko, Gerard Schwarz, Victor Yampolsky, Sebastian Lang-Lessing and the legendary Jens Nygaard. Angela Yoffe has received top prizes in many competitions, including the Dvarionas International Piano Competition in Lithuania.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

Photograph of Miriam Fried

GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — In a musical conversation stretching across three centuries, a tune from Viennese operetta surfaces in a Beethoven piano trio and yet again in a newly penned piece by American composer Paul Schoenfield. Both will be heard at the opening concert of Close Encounters With Music, the Berkshire’s preeminent chamber music series, on Saturday, October 19, 6 PM at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center.

Beethoven’s Trio in B-Flat Major (nicknamed “Gassenhauer Trio”) spins out variations on a theme from Joseph Weigl’s popular 1797 “L’amor marinaro,” and sets the stage for the newly commissioned piece by Schoenfield, Shaatnez, which incorporates the same theme. Ending the program, the heavenly Brahms Piano Quartet Opus 26 is as close to symphonic scale as you get in chamber music. With its drama and gypsy vigor, it delivers an enthralling range of emotions. Featuring violinist Miriam Fried, violist Paul Biss, pianist Renana Gutman, and cellist Yehuda Hanani, the evening provides enduring classics with a contemporary twist.

Paul Schoenfield, whose music is widely performed and who moves with what has been described as “wizardly ease” from jazz to vaudeville and klezmer to ragtime and Broadway—sometimes in a single composition—combines exuberance and seriousness, familiarity and originality, lightness and depth. His work is inspired by the whole range of musical experience, popular styles both American and foreign, vernacular and folk traditions, as exemplified in Café Music, his runaway classical hit. The new Shaatnez (which translates most readily from the Hebrew or Coptic—the origins of the term are obscure—as “linsey-woolsey”) weaves together not only the bawdy Viennese melody adopted by Beethoven, but also the famous Russian song, “Dark Eyes,” to astonishing effect.

“These two melodies co-exist like a marriage made in heaven,” says Close Encounters With Music artistic director Yehuda Hanani, who has known Schoenfield since student days at the Marlboro Festival. “Paul is a little bit like Ravel. He combines mathematical precision with passionate folkloric elements. It’s on the edge and has the acerbic frenzy of music of modernity, but with wit, intelligence, and deep understanding of past traditions and techniques. Shaatnez is framed on the program with two masterpieces, to which it stands up brilliantly.”

Schoenfield has received commissions, grants and awards from Chamber Music America, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Rockefeller Fund, the America Composers Forum and many other organizations; his compositions can be heard on Angel, Decca/London’s Argo label, Vanguard, EMI, Koch, BMG and New World. Shaatnez is the second work Paul Schoenfield has written for Close Encounters With Music. Refractions for clarinet, piano and cello, which was commissioned for bicentennial of Mozart death, was premiered in 1996, performed in New York, Detroit, Phoenix, and other U.S. cities, and recorded on an acclaimed all-Schoenfield CD for Naxos by Hanani, pianist James Tocco and clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein. Cultural critic Seth Rogovoy wrote of the world premiere: “Schoenfield’s dazzling work ingested the basic Mozartean vocabulary and transformed it into something astonishingly new and, even more remarkably, incredibly universal and personal at the same time.”

MORE ABOUT SHAATNEZ
One idea of the biblical notion of shaatnez is that mixing wool and linen upsets the environmental and/or metaphysical fabric of the universe. In combining popular, classical, high and low, it could be said that much of Schoenfield’s signature style is “shaatnez,” that is a weaving and mixing, pastiche and superimposition spun into something classical music has rarely seen before him—that reinvigorates old forms.

Since the inception of the Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, and Robert Beaser—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon. A new work by Paul Schoenfield is cause for classical music aficionados to rejoice.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.


ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Miriam Fried has been recognized for many years as one of the world’s preeminent violinists. She has played as guest soloist with virtually every major orchestra in the United States and Europe, including the principal orchestras of Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh, as well as with the Berlin Philharmonic, Israel Philharmonic, the London Symphony, the Royal Philharmonic, Japan Philharmonic and the Vienna Symphony. Since 1993 she has been Artistic Director of the Ravinia Institute, one of the country’s leading summer programs for young musicians. Additionally, was until recently the first violinist of the Mendelssohn String Quartet and collaborates regularly with her son, pianist Jonathan Biss. She plays a particularly noteworthy violin, a 1718 Stradivarius that is said to have been the favorite of its 18th-century owner, the composer-conductor Louis Spohr.

Yehuda Hanani is internationally renowned for performances with orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Baltimore Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Berlin Radio Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, BBC Welsh Symphony, Irish National Symphony and many others. He has been a guest at Aspen, Chautauqua, Yale at Norfolk, Round Top (TX), Blue Hill, Bowdoin, Great Lakes, and Grand Canyon festivals, among many others, and has collaborated with fellow musicians including Leon Fleisher, Aaron Copland, Christoph Eschenbach, David Robertson, Itzhak Perlman, Dawn Upshaw, Eliot Fisk and the Tokyo, Muir, and Manhattan quartets. In New York City, Yehuda Hanani has appeared as soloist at Carnegie Hall, the 92nd Street Y, Alice Tully, The Frick Collection, and the Metropolitan Museum’s Grace Rainey Rodger Auditorium. His recording of the Alkan Cello Sonata received a Grand Prix du Disque nomination.

Violist Paul Biss has conducted in Mexico, Finland, Brazil, Korea, and Israel and over 125 orchestral performances at the University of Indiana at Bloomington where he was professor of music. He has collaborated with the Mendelssohn Quartet, Fine Arts Quartet, and Alexander Quartet and has appeared in concert with Christoph Eschenbach, Menahem Pressler, Gidon Kremer, Pinchas Zukerman, Miriam Fried, Michael Tree, and Janos Starker, among other eminent performers. He is a faculty member at the Steans Institute for Young Artists at the Ravinia Festival, and at New England Conservatory.

Praised by the New York Sun for playing “with great vigor and aplomb” and for the “true poetry in her phrasing,” pianistRenana Gutman was a top prize winner at the Los Angeles Liszt competition and International Keyboard Festival in New York and has performed with orchestras including the Jerusalem Symphony and Belgian “I Fiamminghi.” One of four young pianists selected by Leon Fleisher to participate in his workshop on Beethoven piano sonatas hosted by Carnegie Hall where she presented performances of Hammerklavier and Appassionata to critical acclaim, she spent three summers at the Marlboro Music Festival where she collaborated with Richard Goode, Mitsuko Uchida, and members of the Guarneri string quartet. She has performed with soprano Susan Naruki and Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Tamara Mumford. Her piano trio Terzetto has won critical acclaim and was featured at the Banff Center, Canada.

Close Encounters With Music (CEWM) stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani puts the composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time—Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Kenji Bunch, and John Musto, among others—to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinoamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

Close Encounters With Music concerts are broadcast on WMHT-FM, and weekly broadcasts of “Classical Music According to Yehuda” are broadcast on WAMC Northeast Radio and at www.wamc.org.

Ticket Information for “Anatomy of a Melody—Beethoven, Brahms and Schoenfield”
Tickets, $45 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $25 (Balcony), are available at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center box office, 413.528.0100; through Close Encounters With Music at 800-843-0778; or by emailing [email protected]. Subscriptions are $225 ($195 for seniors) for a series of 6 concerts, and include a free subscribers-only exclusive event. Performances are supported in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.

For more information about Close Encounters with Music and its 2013–2014 concert schedule, visit www.cewm.org.

2013-14 CALENDAR AT THE MAHAIWE

Anatomy of a Melody—Beethoven, Brahms and Schoenfield, Saturday, October 19, 6PM

The Miraculous Violin: An Evening with Vadim Gluzman & Angela Yoffe, Saturday, December 21, 6PM

Linden String Quartet, Saturday, March 22, 6PM

Magyar! Sunday, April 27, 3PM

Beethoven and the Dawn of Romanticism, Saturday, May 17, 6PM

These five performances are at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, MA.
A reception with light refreshments follows each concert.

Conversations With…
“Footlights at the Met—A Peek Behind the Curtain” at the Mount is on Sunday, November 10. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

“Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Verdi,” at the Lenox Club is at the Lenox Club on Sunday, April 6 at 3 PM. $15 per person includes light refreshments.

Antonin Dvořák —A Bohemian Idyll concert takes place Saturday, June 14, 6PM, at Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, Lenox, MA. Tickets: $50 Orchestra and $40 Balconies.

Photograph of Woman in Historical Costume

Do artifacts make the artist? Can tiaras and swashbuckling ensembles make the star?

Couture meets backstage drama in an afternoon presented by Close Encounters With Music and The Mount, as international costume designer Charles Caine offers a “behind-the-scenes” look at the Met and relates his experiences with such artists as Maria Callas, Beverly Sills, and Marc Chagall. The presentation features the actual tiara and necklace jewelry for Renata Scotto’s Tosca, the bodice of the Franco Zeffirelli designed dress worn by Leontyne Price as Cleopatra, and the actual historic Carmen shawl, worn by Madame Calve, a famous Carmen of the 1890’s.

The talk takes place at Edith Wharton’s Estate and Gardens Sunday, November 10 at 4 PM. Caine will open the curtain on what goes into the dressing and packaging of divas as they appear in opera houses around the world, focusing especially on the venerable Metropolitan Opera in New York City, where he started his career, and continued as resident costume designer for 16 seasons. Since then he has designed for many other opera companies, including Canadian Opera, Montreal Opera, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego, Chicago Lyric, Washington Opera, Philadelphia, Dallas, Houston, and Miami. His designs have appeared in the acclaimed PBS-TV production of “Luisa Miller” starring Domingo, Milnes and Scotto.

“Footlights at the Met” is part of a series of intimate and stimulating conversations about music and ideas, an intrinsic part of the Close Encounters With Music season. “Conversations With…” has presented such notable speakers as writer, editor and Bob Dylan biographer Seth Rogovoy; composer, National Endowment grantee and Guggenheim fellow Judith Zaimont; pianist-authors Walter Ponce and Adam Neiman; Emmy Award-winning animator, illustrator, cartoonist and children’s book author R.O. Blechman; art restorer David Bull; Academy Award nominee Daniel Anker; scholar/performer/multimedia artist Robert Winter; former Yankee, author and sportscaster Jim Bouton; and award-winning poet Charles Coe.

Tickets for this event are $15 and are available on the Close Encounters website – www.cewm.org or at 800-843-0778. Refreshments, courtesy of Chocolate Springs, are included following the presentation.

ABOUT CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH MUSIC
Close Encounters With Music stands at the intersection of music, art and the vast richness of Western culture. Entertaining, erudite and lively commentary from founder and Artistic director Yehuda Hanani puts composers and their times in perspective to enrich the concert experience. Since the inception of its Commissioning Project in 2001, CEWM has worked with the most distinguished composers of our time: Paul Schoenfield, Osvaldo Golijov, Lera Auerbach, Jorge Martin, John Musto, among others to create important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon and on CD. A core of brilliant performers includes pianists James Tocco, Adam Neiman, Walter Ponce and Jeffrey Swann; violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi, Yehonatan Berick, Vadim Gluzman and Toby Appel; harpsichordist Lionel Party; clarinetists Alexander Fiterstein, Charles Neidich; vocalists Dawn Upshaw, Amy Burton, Jennifer Aylmer, Robert White, Lucille Beer and William Sharp; the Vermeer, Amernet, Muir, Manhattan, Avalon, Hugo Wolf quartets, and Cuarteto Latinamericano; and guitarist Eliot Fisk. Choreographer David Parsons and actors Richard Chamberlain, Jane Alexander and Sigourney Weaver have also appeared as guests, weaving narration and dance into the fabric of the programs.

ABOUT THE MOUNT
The Mount is the turn-of-the-century home that Edith Wharton designed and built in Lenox, MA, based on the precepts outlined in her 1897 book The Decoration of Houses, co-authored with architect Ogden Codman, Jr. A perfect example of the newly dawned American Renaissance, the classical revival house and its formal gardens represent the only full expression of Wharton’s architectural and landscape architectural theories. Only five percent of National Historic Landmarks are dedicated to women, and The Mount is one of them.