Events downtown

Aug 18

Portland Chamber Music Festival: Reflections
Location: 88 Bedford St, Portland, Maine 04101, US
7:30 pm - 9:00 pm
Event website

A gentle serenity and sublime slowness infuses a single-movement nocturne by Schubert; the calm before the storm which is Schoenberg’s “stand against tyranny” for piano, reciter, and string quartet. Ode to Napoleon, based on a poem by Lord Byron, references “La Marseillaise” (France’s national anthem) and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony to yield a forcefully dramatic expression of resistance in the World War II era. The evening comes to a glorious close with the absolutely gorgeous clarinet quintet by Brahms, one of his final works, written during an unexpected re-emergence from retirement inspired by hearing the virtuoso clarinetist, Richard Mühlfeld.

Franz Schubert | Notturno in E-flat Major for Piano Trio, Op. 148 (1827)
Anthony Marwood, violin; Raman Ramakrishnan, cello; Shai Wosner, piano

Arnold Schoenberg | Ode to Napoleon, Op. 41 (1942)
Anthony Marwood, Ayano Ninomiya, violins; Melissa Reardon, viola; Clancy Newman, cello; Shai Wosner, piano; Walter van Dyk, narrator

Leonard Cohen (arr. by Clancy Newman) | “Hallelujah” (1984)
Clancy Newman, Raman Ramakrishnan, Brant Taylor, cellos

~Intermission~

Johannes Brahms | Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, Op. 115 (1891)
Alexander Fiterstein, clarinet; Ayano Ninomiya, Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu, violins; Melissa Reardon, viola; Brant Taylor, cello