Tag Archive for: Yehuda Hanani

A Tale of Two Salons—Winnaretta Singer and Marcel Proust

Sewing machine heiress takes Paris by storm, befriends cultural luminaries, and inspires (and supports!) new works by Ravel, Debussy, De Falla, Milhaud, Boulanger, Chabrier, Reynaldo Hahn, and Stravinsky

The daughter of sewing machine industrialist Isaac Merritt Singer, Winnaretta Singer-Polignac was a force of nature, hosting everyone from Leon Bakst to Jean Cocteau and Jean Giraudoux to Prokofiev, Madame Jean Lanvin, Siegfried Wagner, Arthur Rubinstein, 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 Kahan, her biographer, who will join for the four-hand piano “Bagatelle” by Winnaretta’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 this 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, Poulenc and Reynaldo Hahn. Winnaretta also befriended Marcel Proust and his lover Hahn, who reciprocated with an evening at their Paris salon, inspiring a chapter in Swann’s Way.  The program is a rich tapestry in search of a certain time, place and fascinating personages.

A tantalizing Berkshire connection to the tale of the Princess is that her father Isaac Merritt Singer’s business partner was Edward Clark, a wealthy lawyer who took charge of the manufacturing end of the business, turning it into a major success. The rest is history as Clark’s grandson Robert Sterling Clark and his wife Francine founded the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown to house their personal art collection, much of it acquired on their trips to France.

Artists: Alexander Shtarkman, piano; Sylvia Kahan, piano; William Ferguson, tenor; Xiao-Dong Wang, violin; Grace Park, violin; Helena Baillie, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello 

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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NEXT UP

L’Amour Toujours and A World Premiere 
Sunday, June 8, 2025 4 PM
Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

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.” 

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

2024/2025 Current Season 

Sunday, October 20, 4 PM, The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Drama and Melodrama – The Schumanns

Sunday, December 15, 4 PM, The Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Vivace Chamber Orchestra: Tchaikovsky, Grieg, Boccherini, Barber

Sunday, February 23, 4 PM, Saint James Place
6 Unaccompanied Bach Suites for Cello with Colin Carr & Yehuda Hanani

Sunday, March 23, 4 PM, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
”Rite of Spring” – Rachmaninoff/Stravinsky 

Sunday, April 27, 4 PM, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
Classical Roots, Latin Soul – The Dalí String Quartet

Sunday, May 4, 12 PM – Private Club, Lenox MA
Luncheon Musicale 

Sunday, May 18, 4 PM, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
“A Tale of Two Salons” – Winaretta Singer and Marcel Proust

Sunday, June 8, 4PM, Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center
L’Amour Toujours and a World Premiere

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

“Endings” – Piano Trios by Shostakovich and Schubert

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How to end and exit a musical composition—with a bang or a whimper? Will there be the thunderous affirmation of a Beethoven symphony or a whispered adieu à la Mahler’s Song of the Earth, sailing into eternity? A cliffhanger ending leaves the audience on the edge of their seats while a full-circle ending bringing us back to the beginning satisfies human desire for resolution and completeness. Ambiguous endings can evoke many different emotional responses while the happy ending is a classic, satisfying viewers and listeners as they wrap up their experience. Compositional choices will be illuminated by Shostakovich’s haunting, riveting Trio No. 2 and Schubert’s heavenly last work, the Trio No. 2 in E-flat major (the main theme of the slow movement was borrowed from a Swedish song, “The sun has set”), as he turns death and personal tragedy into a triumph—his own personal ending of choice.

Gila Goldstein, piano; Xiao-Dong Wang, violin; Yehuda Hanani, cello

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Individual Tickets: Orchestra/Mezzanine: $60

Season Subscriptions

  • Early Bird Subscription Deadline: September 28
  • Early Bird Subscribers will receive their e-tickets by October 3
  • Regular Season Subscribers will receive their e-tickets on October 24

Virtual Tickets:

$30 for each concert; $100 for access to complete season. A link to the concert video is emailed one week after performances.

Tickets go on sale September 10.

Mostly Amadeus—Meet the Mozarts!

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That the supernatural perfection of Mozart’s music was created by an imperfect child-like person has led many to believe he was a “quill in divine hands.” And the two of his sublime works scheduled (Piano Trio in B-flat KV 502 and Quartet in G minor KV 478) may bring you to the same conclusion. To be reminded of the humanity of the legend, we place him genealogically between his father Leopold, a minor composer who wrote piano exercises for the young Amadeus and his sister Nannerl and shrewdly marketed his “child wonder,” and one of Amadeus’s four sons, Franz Xaver, who, barring the phenomenal virtuosity of his father, would have certainly been noted as a fine composer in his own right.  A special attraction will be the world premiere of a Mozart fragment we have discovered under unusual circumstances!

Ieva Jokūbavičiūtė, piano; Hye-Jin Kim, violin; Ara Gregorian, viola; Yehuda Hanani, cello

 “Anna Polonsky, a chamber musician of exceptional refinement…appealing touch and compelling interpretive skills.” — The New York Times

“…heart-stopping and unrivaled beauty… Hye-Jin Kim’s was supremely musical playing, well thought out, yet of the moment.” – The Strad

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Individual Tickets:

Balcony: $35
Orchestra/Mezzanine: $60
Ages 18 – 35: $25
Student tickets are available at the door: $15

Season Subscriptions

  • Early Bird Subscription Deadline: September 28
  • Early Bird Subscribers will receive their e-tickets by October 3
  • Regular Season Subscribers will receive their e-tickets on October 24

Virtual Tickets:

$30 for each concert; $100 for access to complete season. A link to the concert video is emailed one week after performances.

Tickets go on sale September 10.

“On the Wings of Song”—Schumann’s Dichterliebe and Mendelssohn Piano Trio

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Robert Schumann’s setting of Heinrich Heine’s song cycle, Dichterlibe—A Poet’s Love—is, in a word, spellbinding.  The rendering of the age-old theme of love and betrayal is personal and intimate, with barriers between singer and listener removed.  It is Romanticism at its most exquisite.  Mendelssohn, too, was captivated by Heine’s lyrical genius and wrote music to seven of his poems (“On the Wings of Song” is one)—linking all three giants.  His majestic Piano Trio in D minor is an expression of his unwavering belief in the possibility of a harmonious, enlightened world and the triumph of beauty. The charismatic baritone John Moore injects profound psychological insights into the text to produce a riveting experience together with his long-time artistic collaborator pianist Adam Golka. Moore recently made his debut with Washington National Opera as Steve Jobs in The (R)evolution of Steve Jobs, a role he has sung across the U.S. to great acclaim.

​John Moore, baritone; Adam Golka, piano; Miranda Cuckson, violin, Yehuda Hanani, cello

“Miranda Cuckson…a brilliant young performer who plays daunting contemporary music with insight, honesty, and temperament…and standard repertory with beauty and assurance.” — The New York Times

“A pianist with brilliant technique and real emotional depth” — The Washington Post

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Individual Tickets:

Balcony: $35
Orchestra/Mezzanine: $60
Ages 18 – 35: $25
Student tickets are available at the door: $15

Season Subscriptions

  • Early Bird Subscription Deadline: September 28
  • Early Bird Subscribers will receive their e-tickets by October 3
  • Regular Season Subscribers will receive their e-tickets on October 24

Virtual Tickets:

$30 for each concert; $100 for access to complete season. A link to the concert video is emailed one week after performances.

Tickets go on sale September 10.

Romance of the Romani!—Ravel, Bartok, Liszt, Haydn and Brahms Piano Quartet

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The season closes with the irresistible fire and passion of music shaped by Roma traditions, which left an indelible mark on European composers. The romance, longing, and sense of freedom in these melodies found their way into some of the most beloved works of the repertoire. Haydn’s Piano Trio No. 39, with its famous “Gypsy” Rondo, dazzles in Hungarian style, while Brahms unleashes unbridled intensity in the torrential finale of his Piano Quartet No. 1. Ravel (Tzigane), Bartók (Romanian Dances), and Liszt (Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2) add their voices to this vibrant tradition. After the performance, join us for a festive reception—complete with a fortune teller to offer a lighthearted glimpse into your future. Our prediction: a brilliant season finale filled with inspired music and extraordinary performers.

 Max Levinson, piano; Giora Schmidt, violin; Helena Baillie, viola, Yehuda Hanani, cello; Laura Melnicoff, cello

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Individual Tickets:

Balcony: $35
Orchestra/Mezzanine: $60
Ages 18 – 35: $25
Student tickets are available at the door: $15

Season Subscriptions

  • Early Bird Subscription Deadline: September 28
  • Early Bird Subscribers will receive their e-tickets by October 3
  • Regular Season Subscribers will receive their e-tickets on October 24

Virtual Tickets:

$30 for each concert; $100 for access to complete season. A link to the concert video is emailed one week after performances.

Tickets go on sale September 10.