<body><div><figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=14TnRf_0vp5bhPB00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=14TnRf_0vp5bhPB00" width="500" height="750" ></figure>The outstanding range of Utah’s chamber music is about to expand with a new festival that features four internationally acclaimed musicians performing three of the best examples of the classic piano quartet literature in concerts slated for Logan, Provo and Salt Lake City.The three concerts comprise the inaugural Utah Chamber Music Festival, organized by Utah violinist William Hagen and in partnership with The Chamber Music Society Of Logan, Intermezzo Chamber Music Series and Brigham Young University.With violin, viola, cello and piano comprising the quartet, Hagen and the guest musicians have selected three superb games from the piano quartet literature. Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478 and Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor will be the featured works on the Oct. 8 concert at Utah State University in the Russell/Wanlass Performance Center’s chamber music hall which has exceptional acoustics and on the Oct. 10 concert in the recital hall at Brigham Young University’s Music Building. The Oct. 9 concert in Libby Gardner Concert Hall at The University of Utah will feature Dvořák’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E Flat Major, along with the Mozart work. All three concerts will start at 7:30 p.m.“I have been lucky to play with amazing musicians from around the world and to now have the opportunity to bring some of them to Utah,” Hagen said in an interview with The Utah Review. With the objective of making this chamber music festival an annual event, Hagen said he is especially grateful to Paul and Jenny Ahlstrom for helping to lay the foundation with their sponsorship, which also includes support from the Salt Lake Chamber, Utah World Trade Center and IsoTalent. Hagen is pulling all the stops for an invigorating launch of this new chamber music festival. The Utah-based violinist performs as a soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician. The past year has included appearances, including the Detroit Symphony and a Netherlands tour with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta. He has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, San Francisco Symphony, and at venues like Wigmore Hall and the Louvre. His debut album, Danse Russe, features pianist Albert Cano Smit, who also will be performing during the festival. Hagen studied with two titans in the violin world: Itzhak Perlman and Christian Tetzlaff. The third prize winner at the Queen Elisabeth Competition, he performs on a 1732 Stradivari violin, generously loaned by the Rachel Barton Pine Foundation.Smit, a pianist with Spanish and Dutch heritage, has cultivated his own international career, including performances with the Seattle Symphony, Barcelona Symphony, and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Other highlights include his Carnegie Hall debut, recitals at the Kennedy Center, and tours in Asia and Europe. Currently living in New York City, Smit is a Juilliard alumnus who collaborates with top artists and ensembles in regularly premiering newly commissioned works. From Germany, Arthur Hornig is the 1st Principal Cellist of Deutsche Oper Berlin and principal cellist of the Bayreuth Wagner Festival. He has performed with orchestras such as the Radio Symphony Orchestra Berlin and Beethoven Orchestra Bonn. As a chamber musician and educator, Arthur appears at major festivals worldwide and has held visiting professorships. He studied under Michael Sanderling and has won numerous honors, including the ECHO Klassik with the Berolina Ensemble. Sindy Mohamed, a violist with French and Egyptian heritage, regularly performs at prestigious events such as the Moritzburg Festival and Schubertiade Hohenems. Along with numerous collaborations (with renowned artists such as Renaud Capuçon and Isabelle Fausto), Mohamed tours with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerakademie Neuss, and Boulez Ensemble. She studied at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris and the Hanns Eisler Academy of Music. <figure><img src="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?type=thumbnail_580x000&amp;url=0MGJRS_0vp5bhPB00" alt="https://img.particlenews.com/image.php?url=0MGJRS_0vp5bhPB00" width="683" height="1024" ><figcaption>Arthur Hornig..</figcaption></figure>FEATURED WORKSIt was one of Vienna’s pioneering music publishers, Franz Anton Hoffmeister, who asked Mozart in 1785 to write music for the newly popular form of chamber music ensemble — the piano quartet, which added viola to the classical piano trio, the bread-and-butter chamber group of the times. Remember that in the 1780s, music written so that even amateurs could perform it in their homes was highly marketable. However, Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, K. 478 was far more complex and demanding to the extent that Hoffmeister called off the business arrangement with the composer. A June, 1788 article published in Weimar’s Journal des Luxus und der Moden summarized these consequences of these circumstances nicely:[As performed by amateurs] it could not please: everybody yawned with boredom over the incomprehensible tintamarre of four instruments which did not keep together for four bars on end, and whose senseless concentus never allowed any unity of feeling; but it had to please, it had to be praised! … what a difference when this much-advertised work of art is performed with the highest degree of accuracy by four skilled musicians who have studied it carefully.Brahms wrote his Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor when he was 28, just a year younger than when Mozart penned his first piano quartet. The Brahms work stands out for the rondo, rendered upon the musical styles of the Romany tradition. In fact, Arnold Schoenberg later transcribed the work for orchestra. &nbsp;The international ensemble that Hagen has assembled for this chamber music festival undoubtedly will rise to the challenge of a rondo packed with flourishes of bravado that compares impressively to later works such as Bartók’s rhapsodies which were based on Hungarian and Romanian folk music. The Hungarian vibe is evident in this Brahms’ work with the hard stress on the first beat, which parallels a familiar characteristic in Hungarian pronunciation of names and words, where the accent consistently is on the first syllable. The piano at time mimics the sonic textures of the quintessential Hungarian folk instrument, the cimbalom. But, the three other movements in this Brahms work are just as exciting and gratifying, a magnificent achievement for a composer who already had found his mature musical language at his young age.Dvořák’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in E Flat Major came nearly 15 years after his first piano quartet was published by the Berlin publisher Fritz Simrock, who had relentlessly urged the composer to write another work for the chamber ensemble form. This work came in 1889, and had its premiere in the following year. Dvořák was 48 when he composed this piano quartet, which epitomizes the orchestration marvels he achieved with his later symphonies. There are familiar Dvořák elements, such as the false coda, which makes for a much more dynamic ending in movements. The second movement ingeniously sets up parallel expressions of five intertwined themes, producing one of the composer’s finest slowest movements. And, then be prepared to be dazzled in the final movement, with a galloping rhythmic theme that takes the musicians through a surprising harmonic journey, with the movement beginning unexpectedly in E flat minor before landing back in the home key of the work. For tickets and more information, see the music festival website.</div></body>

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Inaugural Utah Chamber Music Festival will feature concerts in Logan, Provo, Salt Lake City, with piano quartets by Mozart, Brahms, Dvořák

The outstanding range of Utah’s chamber music is about to expand with a new festival that features four internationally acclaimed musicians performing three of the best examples of the classic piano quartet literature in concerts slated for Logan, Provo and Salt Lake City. The three concerts comprise the inaugural...

Inaugural Utah Chamber Music Festival will feature concerts in Logan, Provo, Salt Lake City, with piano quartets by Mozart, Brahms, Dvořák

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