More Information About Chameleon Arts Ensemble: Forever Sounding Across Centuries

Website

http://www.chameleonarts.org/concerts/november.html

Description

Program

Derek Bermel
Wanderings for woodwind quintet - Boston Premiere

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Quintet in A Major for clarinet & strings, K. 581

Leo Ornstein
Piano Quintet (1927)

The second concert of the Chameleon Arts Ensemble’s Tenth Anniversary Season will occur at the Goethe-Institut Boston, 170 Beacon Street in the Back Bay. The concert is entitled forever sounding across centuries, and includes the Boston Premiere of Derek Bermel’s Wanderings for woodwind quintet, Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet in A Major, and the Piano Quintet of 1927 by American composer Leo Ornstein. Pianist Katherine Chi will be joining the Chameleons as a special guest.

Born in Russia around 1893 (the exact year and day are uncertain) and initially educated at the St. Petersburg Conservatory before his family was forced to flee to the United States, Leo Ornstein was one of the most famous musicians in the world between 1910 and 1925. He dazzled audiences with his virtuoso piano playing, both on standard repertoire and often on American premieres of works by Albeniz, Schoenberg, Debussy, Ravel, Scriabin, Franck and Bartok. Ornstein’s own electrifying compositions, born simply from the music that ran through his head and not tied to any particular compositional method or school, earned him seemingly equal amounts of admiring praise and vehement derision. Some critics hailed him as equal or even superior to Stravinsky and Schoenberg, and wherever he traveled, concert halls were filled to capacity, not only with music-loving audiences but also with admiring fellow-musicians. He was famous enough to have a biography written about him by the age of 26 but abruptly abandoned his performing career, choosing instead to teach and compose in near-obscurity until his passing – at the age of 109! Ornstein’s piano quintet of 1927 is a masterpiece of the genre, an epic work deserving of a wider audience, fully the equal of any of the great Romantic piano quintets.

Guest pianist Katherine Chi has performed throughout Europe and North America to great acclaim, including her 2003 New York recital debut about which The New York Times raved “Ms. Chi displayed a keen musical intelligence and a powerful arsenal of technique.” Her debut last season with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra also established her as one of Canada’s fastest rising stars of classical music. “...the most sensational but, better, the most unfailingly cogent and compelling Prokofiev’s Third I have heard in years” said The Globe and Mail. Educated at The Curtis Institute and New England Conservatory as a student of Russell Sherman, she was a prizewinner at the 1998 Busoni International Piano Competition and was the first Canadian and first woman to win Canada’s Honens International Piano Competition.

About the Ticket Supplier: Chameleon Arts Ensemble of Boston

Founded in 1998, Chameleon Arts Ensemble has distinguished itself as one of the finest, most versatile chamber ensembles in Boston. Chameleon integrates old and new repertoire into unexpected chamber music programs that are themselves works of art. This innovative ensemble draws those who love the adventure of music - classic and contemporary. Over the past fourteen years, Chameleon has produced more than 100 concerts, with 320 different works by 180 different composers. The Ensemble was recognized nationally with 2009 and 2007 CMA/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming. Concert recordings are regularly broadcast on WGBH Radio, and they make frequent appearances on WGBH's Classical Performances Live.