“L’Amour Tourjours—And a World Premiere,” Sunday, June 18, 4pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, Mass

Concert Featuring Brahms, Broadway, Schubert, Massenet, Mozart, Ellington, and New Grosshandler Trio, “All Speak of Love”

GREAT BARRINGTON — It’s all about love: A new work for clarinet trio by composer Seth Grosshandler that celebrates young love, courtship and the serendipity of meeting one’s intended receives its inaugural performance. Signature love arias from favorite operas and Broadway sung by Metropolitan Opera soprano Danielle Talamantes and Kerry Wilkerson. Schubert’s Shepherd on the Rock (“My sweetheart dwells so far from me, I long hotly to be with her over there”) is a tour de force meshing clarinet and soprano. Resolved to retire, in 1891 Brahms encountered the clarinet playing of Richard Mühlfeld and was inspired by a fresh muse to compose once again. A scholar and close friend of Brahms praised the Clarinet Trio, writing that & “It is as though the instruments were in love with each other.”

“Love is revealed in many different manifestations,” says Yehuda Hanani. “The passion, the tenderness, the devotion, the longing, the elation, and the heartbreak. Music is the perfect vehicle to capture it all.” Seth Grosshandler’s new work, also “L’Amour Toujours, Miniatures on 853-4542” was inspired by a chance meeting, a telephone number written backwards on a piece of music paper, and a marriage of many decades that followed a fateful phone call.

An all-star ensemble that shares the stage with artistic director Yehuda Hanani includes clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein (“…treats his instrument as his personal voice, dazzling in its spectrum of colors, agility, and range”—Washington Post) returning to CEWM after several seasons and Metropolitan Opera soprano Danielle Talamantes and her partner in romance and song, baritone Kerry Wilkerson, who also will regale with a love songs by Mendelssohn, Turina, from “Magic Flute” and “Phantom of the Opera.” Pianist Max Levinson’s career was launched when he won first prize at the Guardian Dublin International Piano Competition, the first American to achieve this distinction. He was awarded the prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and in 2005, the Andrew Wolf Award for his chamber music playing. The Boston Globe proclaimed: “The questioning, conviction, and feeling in his playing invariably remind us of the deep reasons why music is important to us, why we listen to it, why we care so much about it.” Levinson has performed as soloist with the San Francisco Symphony, St. Louis Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Detroit Symphony, Baltimore Symphony, Indianapolis Symphony, Oregon Symphony, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Boston Pops, and National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland among others.

So concludes Season 33 of Close Encounters With Music —bookended by the immortal Brahms, by inspiration, and love for the craft. As Shakespeare so eloquently put it, “If Music be the food of love, play on.”

TICKET INFORMATION

Single Tickets, $55 (Orchestra and Mezzanine), $30 (Balcony) and $15 for students, are available through the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center or by calling 413-528-0100. 

“CEWM patrons have learned that sooner or later they’ll be blindsided by a performance so sublime it will defy explanation.”

—  The Berkshire Edge

HOW TO REACH US

Close Encounters With Music
Post Office Box 34
Great Barrington, MA 01230
Web: cewm.org
e-mail: [email protected]

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