Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

Classical Music

The New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO) and the Yale University Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library are pleased to collaborate on the William Walton Project. The Frederick R. Koch Collection, housed at the Beinecke Library, contains the world's largest archive of Walton's original manuscripts. This project presents a unique opportunity for Walton's music to be "brought to life," using these manuscripts as the source of preparation for performances.

Classical Music

Native American tradition attaches special meaning to dreams. One tradition was to hang a 'dream catcher' that would move freely in the night air. The hand-crafted object consists of a web within a ring, with feathers extended from the perimeter of the ring. According to tradition, good dreams know their destination: they slip through the hole in the center of the web and glide gently down the feather into the subconscious of the dreamer. Bad dreams become entangled in the web and dissipate with the light of the dawn. Although highly notated, precise, carefully structured, soundly proportioned, and while musicians are elegantly working from a nuanced, specific text, I like my music to have the feeling that it is organically being self-propelled - on the spot. As if we listeners are overhearing a captured improvisation. My music, which is organic and, at every level, concerned with transformations and connections, should be played so that the inner life of the different rhythmic, timbral and pitch syntaxes are made explicit and are then organically allied to one another with characterized phrasing of rhythm, color, harmony, counterpoint, tempo, keeping it alive - continuously sounding spontaneous. All of this, hopefully, working toward the fundamental goal: to compose a work in which every musical parameter is allied in one holistic gestalt. Dream Catcher for solo cello is dedicated with admiration and gratitude to Anssi Karttunen and is In Memoriam Oliver Knussen.

The Petrof Piano Trio was created in 2009 by Wihan Quartet violinist Jan Schulmeister. The members are renowned chamber music players, and together bring over 60 years of experience in concert activity. In the same year it was formed, the ensemble became the resident trio of the PETROF Piano Company. The company, known for it's long tradition and quality, immediately recognized that the Petrof Trio was an ensemble whose performances were at the highest level and was keen to support it.

Hailed for it's "precision, assertiveness and vigor" (New York Times), it's "gripping intensity" and "suspenseful and virtuoso playing" (San Francisco Classical Voice), and for a "hair-raising performance (Strad), the Amphion String Quartet is a winner of the 2011 Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition. The Quartet served as the Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-In-Residence at the Caramoor Festival for the 2012-13 season, and has recently joined the roster of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center CMS Two program.

Augusta Read Thomas : Avian Capriccio (2016)For Brass QuintetDuration: c. 12 minutesFormat: 40-page A4 saddle stitched score & 5 A4 saddle stitched parts“If it is helpful to have abstract images in mind and ear as you hear the music, for movement #1, please imagine the musicians as playful, capricious, virtuosic hummingbirds darting around a garden, For movement #2, swans majestically floating in a lake, as the morning sun gradually rises, for movement #3, please envision active, jaunty, and alert canaries crisscrossing the perfumes of Charley Parker’s Yardbird Suite and Ornithology.” Augusta Read Thomas

Classical Music