NOTE: This is the Saturday and Sunday Masterworks combination series.
The 41st season of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society features musical masterpieces from the early 17th century to the early 21st, played on some of the world’s most highly prized musical instruments. This season’s Masterworks of Five Centuries series commemorates the 190th anniversary of the death of Franz Schubert and this option includes all nine different repertoires are distributed over the Saturday and Sunday six-concert series.
This series opens in early October with the final installment in the Chamber Players’ survey of all of Haydn’s trios written for the five-octave fortepiano.
It continues in mid-October with a Brahms concert using a late-Viennese all-wooden fortepiano similar to the instrument Brahms used while composing his first two piano quartets.
The versatility of this kind of piano is highlighted in December’s Beethoven/Schubert trio program.
January’s Smithsonian Consort of Viols program investigates the music of John Jenkins, a venerable and much-beloved figure at the court of Charles I and throughout the interregnum.
Later that month, tenor Aaron Sheehan offers Schubert’s “Winter’s Journey.”
In late January, Reinbert de Leeuw’s ingenious orchestrations (for 14 instruments and voice) of twenty-one of Schubert and Schumann’s best-known songs as Im wunderschönen Monat Mai is performed. Dutch film and television actress Katja Herbers (best known in this country for her portrayal of physicist Helen Prins in the WGN America cable/satellite series Manhattan, about the development of the atomic bomb) interprets the evocative texts.
In February, enjoy an all-Bach recital by Kenneth Slowik.
In mid-April, one of Schubert’s most powerful early quartets is paired with the magisterial Octet with which he intended “to prepare the way for his grand symphony.”
The series concludes in early May with the first of a series of programs taking up the little-known, but fascinatingly inventive, early keyboard trios of Haydn.
Kenneth Slowik, SCMS artistic director and recipient of the Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar Award, curates a series of pre-concert lectures (one hour prior to each program), shedding light on the glorious music and the life and times of the featured composers.
SCHEDULE
Click on separate dates for individual purchase.
Sat., Oct. 7, 2017
Joseph Haydn: Three Piano Trios, Hob: XV: 27-29, “dedicated to Mrs. Bartolozzi” (1797)
The Smithsonian Chamber Players: Catherine Manson, violin; Myron Lutzke, violoncello; Kenneth Slowik, fortepiano
Sun., Oct. 22, 2017
Johannes Brahms: Sonata in E Minor, Op. 38, for Cello and Piano (1862-5)
Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet in G Minor, Op. 25 (1861)
The Smithsonian Chamber Players: Katherine Kyme, violin; Steven Dann, viola; William Skeen, violoncello; Kenneth Slowik, fortepiano
Sun., Dec. 10, 2017
Ludwig van Beethoven: Trio in D Major, Op. 70, No. 1, The Ghost (1808)
Franz Schubert: Trio in B-flat Major, D898 (1827)
The Smithsonian Chamber Players: Mark Fewer, violin; Myron Lutzke, violoncello; Kenneth Slowik, fortepiano
Sat., Jan. 13, 2018
Consort Music of John Jenkins (1592-1678)
The Smithsonian Consort of Viols: Kenneth Slowik, treble viol and organ; Lucine Musaelian, Zoe Weiss, Catherine Slowik, Patricia Neely, and William Skeen, viols
Sat., Jan. 20, 2018
Franz Schubert: Winterreise, D911 (1827)
Aaron Sheehan, tenor; Kenneth Slowik, fortepiano
Sun., Jan. 28, 2018
Note: There is no pre-concert lecture for this performance.
Reinbert de Leeuw: Im wunderschönen Monat Mai: Three times seven Lieder after Schumann and Schubert (2004)
The Smithsonian Chamber Players: Katya Herbers, actress; Kenneth Slowik, piano and direction
Sun., Feb. 25, 2018
Johann Sebastian Bach: Suite in E-flat Major, BWV 1010 (ca. 1720)
Johann Sebastian Bach: “English” Suite in E Minor, BWV 811 (before 1720)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903 (before 1723)
Kenneth Slowik, violoncello and harpsichord
Sun., April 15, 2018
Franz Schubert: Quartet in G Minor, D173 (1815)
Franz Schubert: Octet in F Major, D803 (1824)
The Smithsonian Chamber Players: Vera Beths and Cynthia Roberts, violins; Steven Dann, viola; Kenneth Slowik, violoncello; Anthony Manzo, bass; Charles Neidich, clarinet; Andrew Schwartz, bassoon; William Purvis, horn
Sat., May 5, 2018
Joseph Haydn: Early Keyboard Trios (1759-85)
The Smithsonian Chamber Players: Ian Swensen, violin; Elisabeth Reed, violoncello; Kenneth Slowik, harpsichord
GENERAL INFORMATION
- All concerts are held in the Hall of Music, American History Museum.
- The ticket code for this 9-concert series is BPQ5.
- This concert combination does not include Sun., Jan. 14, 2018; Sat., Jan. 27, 2018; or Sat., April 14, 2018.
- If you are interested in all-Saturday Masterworks 6-concert series, click here.
- If you are interested in all-Sunday Masterworks 6-concert series, click here.
- To learn more information about the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, click here.
- Program, location, and artists are subject to change.
