Tag Archive for: Yehuda Hanani

Something Borrowed, Something Blue — Cross-Cultural Synergy on April 14

Close Encounters with Music presents “Something Borrowed, Something Blue — Cross-Cultural Synergy” on Sunday, April 14 at 4pm at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Chertock and Zorman join internationally renowned cellist and artistic director Yehuda Hanani for an adventurous musical voyage. Join us for this intriguing chamber music performance!

Debussy and Ravel in Spanish attire; Haydn’s “Gypsy” Trio, Beethoven Turkish Marches, Synagogue Prayer in Gregorian Mode, Tango, and Other Exotica Enliven and Extend the Composers’ Palettes and Listeners’ Pleasures.  And Celebrating 100th Anniversary of Gershwin’s 1924 Rhapsody in Blue!

Tickets Here

Press Release

Close Encounters With Music’s Winter / Spring 2024 concerts continue on Sunday, April 14 with an afternoon of jazz, tango, liturgy, waltz, Habanera and Gershwin’s wildly popular Rhapsody in Blue, known for its integration of jazz and classical music – and written on the train between New York and Boston!  Composers include Haydn (Gypsy tunes), Max Bruch (German composer retrofits synagogue “Kol Nidrei” prayer), Ravel and Debussy (Spanish and North African heritage), César Cui (Russian composer writes “Orientale”), and Astor Piazzolla (tango goes to Paris!).     

Michael Chertock, piano; Itamar Zorman, violin; Yehuda Hanani, cello.

Pianist Michael Chertock has been a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal, the symphony orchestras of Toronto, Baltimore, Detroit, Utah and Oregon, and made his Carnegie Hall debut with the Cincinnati Pops.  Since his emergence winning top prize at the 2011 International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow, violinist Itamar Zorman has wowed audiences all over the world with his breathtaking style, causing one critic to declare him a “young badass who’s not afraid of anything.”  Also winner of the 2013 Avery Fisher Career Grant, he has performed as soloist with such orchestras as the Israel Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Atlanta Symphony, German Radio Philharmonic, and RTE National Symphony Orchestra (Dublin), working with Zubin Mehta, Michael Tilson-Thomas, David Robertson, Valery Gergiev, Karina Canellakis and Yuri Bashmet.  Chertock and Zorman join internationally renowned cellist and Artistic Director Yehuda Hanani in “Something Borrowed, Something Blue—Cross-Cultural Synergy” for an adventurous musical voyage.

Read artist bios here.

CEWM has resumed its hors d’oeuvres and wine Afterglow receptions on stage following the concerts. Audience members are invited to meet the artists and enjoy beverages and bites by Authentic Eats by Oleg. Join us!

TICKET INFORMATION 

Tickets, $52 (Orchestra and Mezzanine) and $28 (Balcony), can be purchased at www. cewm.org or by calling 413-528-0100. We also offer a virtual option—tickets are $28 for individual programs, delivered to your email address!

Tickets Here

Tag Archive for: Yehuda Hanani

Vivace Chamber Orchestra: Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Boccherini, Barber

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Composed by Tchaikovsky to counter a bout of insomnia and melancholy, Serenade for Strings immediately cheered him up, and he reported “feeling well, invigorated and content” – as gratified listeners have over the years. Few composers have possessed the ability to reflect emotions within their music as well as Tchaikovsky, and the Serenade channels solemnity and joy (an homage to Mozart, a memorable joy) into one perfect package. Barber’s iconic Adagio, “full of pathos and cathartic passion, rarely leaves a dry eye” (it was played at the funerals of Albert Einstein and Princess Grace of Monaco…). Holberg Suite (subtitled “suite in the olden style” – 1884), one of Grieg’s most beloved works, offers chorale-like harmonies, joyous and lilting rhythms, and hints of a rural fiddle player. Boccherini’s Baroque-era Cello Concerto, rewritten in a Romantic vein, is a virtuosic delight. The Vivace Chamber Orchestra is comprised of fourteen top-tier soloists who gather for periodic tours.

Vivace Chamber Orchestra; Yehuda Hanani, cello

Join us for an Afterglow Reception on the Mahaiwe stage following the concert! You are invited to meet the artists and enjoy bites and beverages by Authentic Eats by Oleg.

Tickets

6 Unaccompanied Bach Suites for Cello with Colin Carr & Yehuda Hanani

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Two leading Bach interpreters embark on a journey while traversing his Six Suites, the apogee of the cello repertoire. Filled with mystery and beauty, blasted through with rapture, every note is a bold statement. Music that first flowed from the composer’s quill in the early 1700’s, it belongs to no specific time or place. At the same time as it floats in the heavenly spheres, it provides plenty of earthly pleasures – courtly music, riffs, Celtic jigs, the merriment of a tavern musician, and glimpses of modern minimalism. The title “Unaccompanied” is a bit of a misnomer: a single cellist takes on numerous voices, making the music drama for three or four characters played by the actor! If angels danced, this is the music that would no doubt accompany them on their gramophone.

Colin Carr, cello; Yehuda Hanani, cello

Join us for an Afterglow Reception at Saint James Place following the concert! You are invited to meet the artists and enjoy bites and beverages by Authentic Eats by Oleg.


 

“…Colin Carr—supreme technique and ebullience” –Boston Musical Intelligencer

“In this era of the cello, Hanani is among the best. His Bach was absorbing, 

imaginative, beautiful in all respects.” –San Francisco Examiner

“Rite of Spring”—Rachmaninoff/Stravinsky

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Two monumental works, two Russian ex-pats of the same aristocratic background – and two divergent extremes. One a master of nostalgia and a formidable pianist, follows in the footsteps of Chopin. The other, a trailblazer, scandalizer and collaborator of Picasso delights in breaking old molds – though harking back to traditional Russian folk material – and ushers in a new age in music, conceptually aligned with Cubism. Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring shocked tout-Paris and sparked riots (scenes from the film Coco Chanel will be shown). Rachmaninoff’s Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano was written after a course of hypnotherapy for “composers block,” out of which emerged a work of virtuosity and grandeur, with his characteristic flourishes and a Russian Belle Époque sensibility. “Terrifyingly difficult” for the piano, it is a virtual piano concerto – not to downplay the soulful melodic role of the cello.

Michael Chertock, piano; Yehuda Hanani, cello

Join us for an Afterglow Reception on the Mahaiwe stage following the concert! You are invited to meet the artists and enjoy bites and beverages by Authentic Eats by Oleg.

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A Tale of Two Salons—Winnaretta Singer and Marcel Proust

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The daughter of sewing machine industrialist Isaac Merritt Singer, Winnaretta Singer, Princess de Polignac, was a force of nature, hosting everyone from Leion Bakst to Jean Cocteau and Jean Giraudoux to Prokofiev, Madame Jean Lanvin, Siegfried Wagner, Arthur Rubenstein, Arnold Schoenberg, and Edith Wharton in her Paris salon. more importantly, she was responsible for developing a new genre: “Great music for a small space by up-and-coming composers” in the words of Sylvia Kahane, her biographer, who will join for the four-hand piano “Bagatelle” by Winaretta’s husband, Edmond de Polignac. Works either commissioned by her, dedicated to her, or that were performed in her mansion on Rue Henri-Martin, will be featured in our on-stage “salon”: Ravel’s Pavane pour un enfant défunte, Stravinsky’s Piano Sonata 1924, the sizzling César Franck Piano Quintet and songs by Fauré, Polenc and Reynaldo Hahn. She also befriended Marcel Proust and his lover Hahn, who reciprocated with an evening at their Pairs salon, inspiring a chapter in Swann’s Way.  A rich tapestry in search of time, place and personages.

Alexander Shtarkman, piano; Sylvia Kahane, piano; William Ferguson, tenor; Xiao-Dong Wang, violin; Helena Baillie, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello 

Join us for an Afterglow Reception on the Mahaiwe stage following the concert! You are invited to meet the artists and enjoy bites and beverages by Authentic Eats by Oleg.

Tickets

L’Amour Toujours and A World Premiere

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It’s all about love: A new work for clarinet trio by composer Seth Grosshandler that celebrates young love, courtship and 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.” 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. So concludes Season 33 of Close Encounters With Music – bookended by the immortal Brahms, by inspiration and friendship.

Max Levinson, piano; Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet; Danielle Talamantes, soprano; Kerry Wilkerson, baritone; Yehuda Hanani, cello

Tickets