Pleasantville Chamber Music Society

Sunday, November 24, 2013  •  3:00 pm
Pleasantville Presbyterian Church
400 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, NY 10570

Admission is Free

Curtis Macomber, Violin
Calvin Wiersma, Violin
John Dexter, Viola
Christopher Finckel, Cello

Acclaimed as one of America's leading ensembles, the Manhattan String Quartet is celebrating its 41st season. Hailed by the Boston Globe as “a national treasure,” the Quartet has appeared throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, Canada, Mexico and South America. 

Well known for their performances of 20th-century classics, the Quartet has established an international reputation as the pre-eminent interpreter of the string quartets of Dmitri Shostakovich. In 2005, they presented the cycle to sold-out houses in Nagoya and Tokyo, Japan. The ensemble’s transversal of the Shostakovich cycle was the only chamber music recording to make TIME’s “Best of 1991” classical music list.

The Quartet appears regularly in the musical capitals of Europe including Paris, Prague, Budapest, Leipzig and Vienna. Since 1981, the Quartet has hosted annual teaching and performing conferences in the United States and Europe for young professional quartets.

Their program will include:

W. A. Mozart: String Quartet in D major, K499 (1796)
The “Hoffmeister” quartet, named after Mozart’s friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister, was written between the six quartets dedicated to Haydn and the three Prussian quartets.           

Benjamin Britten: String Quartet #2 in C major, Op. 36 (1945)
Composed when Britten was 32 years old, the chaconne of the last movement is reputedly a tribute to Henry Purcell, who died 200 years earlier, in 1745.

Antonin Dvorak: String Quartet in C major, Op. 61 (1881)
The eleventh of Dvorak’s fourteen quartets, Op. 61 was said to have been written in just a few days.  We look forward to hearing this challenging and vivacious work.

Sunday, January 19, 2014  •  3:00 p.m.
Pleasantville Presbyterian Church
400 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, NY 10570

Admission is Free

Kelli Kathman, Flute
Carl Oswald, Oboe
Romie de Guise-Langlois, Clarinet
Adrian Morejon, Bassoon
Alana Vegter, Horn

Hailed a “superb ensemble” by New Music Connoisseur, Sospiro Winds has established itself as an exciting force on the chamber music scene. Formed in 2004, the ensemble began performing while at the Yale School of Music.

Recent highlights include Sospiro’s 4th season with Musical Connections (a program of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Institute) and performances presented by the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Rutgers, and the Boston Conservatory. In 2008, Sospiro celebrated its Carnegie Hall debut in Zankel Hall. 

Sospiro has collaborated with chamber artists such as David Shifrin, William Purvis, Milan Turkovic, Alessio Bax, the Brubeck Jazz Quartet, and others. The group has also worked with members of the Moran Wind Quintet and the Chiara String Quartet while in residency at the Chamber Music Institute in Lincoln, Nebraska. The ensemble has premiered new works by Lembit Beecher, James Borchers, Donald Hagar, and Matthew Barnson, and Douglas Fisk.

Their program is focused on The Roaring Twenties:

 George Gershwin - 3 Preludes (1926)
Paul Hindemith - Kammermusik (1921-1928) 
Kurt Weill - Songs from "The Threepenny Opera" (arr. Kay) 

Nielsen Quintet - (1922) - 20'

Sunday, March 9, 2014 • 3:00 p.m.
Pleasantville Presbyterian Church
400 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, NY 10570

Admission is Free

Muneko Otani, Violin
Jennifer Leshnower, Violin
Sarah Adams, Viola
Nicole Johnson, Cello

Formed in 1985, the Cassatt celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006 with a series of world-premieres, a performance at the Library of Congress (on the Library's Stradivarius Collection), and concerts for the American Academy in Rome, Cornell and Syracuse universities. They have appeared at Alice Tully Hall, Weill Recital Hall, Tanglewood, the Kennedy Center, the Theatre des Champs-Élysées in Paris and Maeda Hall in Tokyo.

Equally adept at classical masterpieces and contemporary music, the Cassatt has collaborated with a remarkable array of artists/composers Named three times to The New Yorker magazine's "Best of" list, the Cassatt's discography includes new quartets by Pulitzer Prize-winner Steven Stucky and Tina Davidson, by Daniel S. Godfrey, and by Grawemeyer and Rome Prize-winner Sebastian Currier.

The Cassatt is named for the celebrated American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt.

Sunday, April 6, 2014  •  3:00 p.m.
Pleasantville Presbyterian Church
400 Bedford Road, Pleasantville, NY 10570

Admission is Free

Jesse Mills, Violin
Raman Ramakrishnan, Cello
Rieko Aizawa, Piano

Two-time Grammy-nominated violinist Jesse Mills first performed with Raman Ramakrishnan, founding cellist of the Daedalus Quartet, as students more than 20 years ago. In New York, they met pianist Rieko Aizawa, who made her U.S. debuts at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall. Their musical bonds were strengthened at various schools and festivals around the world, including the Juilliard School and the Marlboro Festival.

Ms. Aizawa was the last pupil of legendary pianist Mieczysław Horszowski at the Curtis Institute. The Trio takes inspiration from Horszowski and—like Horszowski—their repertoire spans the traditional and the contemporary. They also seek to perform works from the composers with whom Horszowski had personal contact, such as Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Fauré, Martinu, Villa-Lobos, and Granados.

Hailed by The New Yorker as “destined for great things,” their current season includes debut performances in Japan. The members of the Trio teach at Columbia University and the Longy School of Music of Bard College.