| 7/5/2006 9:14:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article |
|
| The American Brass Quintet has been playing in Salida since the 1979. Courtesy photo by Richard Frank |
|
Salida-Aspen Concert series opens with brass quintet, Finckel and Han
The South lost the Civil War, and a guitar-like instrument invented in 1823, called the arpeggione, did no better.
But as those attending the Salida-Aspen Concert series doubleheader Saturday and Sunday will discover, glorious music emerged from both.
Saturday, at 7:30 p.m. in John Held Auditorium at Salida High School, the “American Brass Quintet,” which has performed here every year since 1979, will play selections from the music of the 26th North Carolina Regimental Band, Confederate States of America.
This is the only known complete set of band music from a Confederate band. The “American Brass Quintet” has recorded the music, including tunes such as “Bonnie Blue Flag,” “Dixie,” “26th Regiment Quickstep” and “Southern Victorial March.”
The quintet will play a selection of this fetching music Saturday.
Sunday at 3 p.m. in John Held Auditorium, pianist Wu Han and her cellist husband David Finckel, among the most esteemed international musicians of the day, will play the Schubert “Sonata in A Minor,” called the “Arpeggione,” for an instrument of that era that was difficult to play and short-lived.
The arpeggione, also known as the bowed guitar, was developed in 1823 by a Viennese instrument maker. It was shaped like a guitar and played between the legs.
Franz Schubert, who lived in Vienna, knew the inventor, and was loyal to his friends. So, although he was wracked by syphilis at the time, in 1824 he wrote a sonata for the new, unwieldy instrument and piano.
Four years later, Schubert was dead. For all practical purposes, so was the arpeggione.
The work was not published until 1871. Now it is one of the best-known and oft-recorded duet works from the Romantic era.
Because the arpeggione is no longer around, the work is performed on various combinations of instruments: violin and guitar, clarinet and guitar, piano and double bass, piano and clarinet, piano and viola and, most frequently, piano and cello.
There are no fewer than 53 compact disc recordings of this magical work in the catalogs. Some of the world’s greatest cellists are on disc performing this work, including Leonard Rose, Mstislav Rostropovich and Lynn Harrell.
Among the pianists are Andras Schiff, James Levine, music director of the New York Metropolitan Opera, and British composer/pianist Benjamin Britten, who died in 1976.
At the Sunday matinee, Han and Finckel, who is cellist for the “Emerson String Quartet,” will perform Britten’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major,” considered one of the finest 20th century works for those two instruments.
Han and Finckel will perform Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano” in D Minor. The second movement, which Han calls “a most hysterical joke,” stretches both instruments to their limits and is punctuated with angry laughter.
Finckel says the work has “peasant, pagan energy” with pulsating rhythm – “kind of like a rock and roll effect.”
Han and Finckel have appeared throughout the world, including the Lincoln Center in New York and 92nd Street Y and Washington’s Kennedy Center.
The married couple launched ArtistLed, the first musician-directed and Internet-based recording company. One of the recordings on ArtistLed is Schubert’s “Arpeggione Sonata.” A reviewer for “Strings” magazine enthused, “With expert, nuanced support from Wu Han, Finckel turns in a performance that is elegant, noble, yet at times plaintive.”
The “American Brass Quintet” has meticulously researched the music of the 26th North Carolina Regimental Band CSA, comprised wholly of Moravian musicians.
Some of the tunes are taken from 19th century opera composers Gaetano Donizetti and Giuseppe Verdi. Saturday in Salida, the quintet will also play works by modern composers Joan Tower and Adam Schoenberg.
The quintet will be joined by a student brass quintet from the Aspen Music Festival and School which co-sponsors the series with Salida Concerts. Inc.
|
Article Comment Submission Form
|
