For Winter-weary audiences, spring begins March 8th and 10th, as the Lenape Chamber Ensemble opens its 2019 season in Upper Black Eddy and in Doylestown. The Friday evening performance is at Upper Black Eddy’s Upper Tinicum Lutheran Church at 8:15; the program is repeated Sunday afternoon at 3 p.m. at Delaware Valley University in Doylestown.
Returning to the stage are celebrated pianist Marcantonio Barone , Emily Daggett Smith, prominent soloist and founding first violinist of the Tessera Quartet, and Alberto Parrini, principal cellist of the Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic. They perform Mozart’s Piano Trio in G Major, K.496, completed in 1786, ten years after his first piano trio, which was mainly a divertimento, written as light music. The G Major Trio was the first to be considered seriously as chamber music; it is more dramatic, beginning with the piano as almost a solo instrument, later, the cello as a primary partner, and in the final movement a three-way conversation.
Tanya Witek, former principal flutist with the New York Symphonic Ensemble and member of the Mostly Mozart and New York City Ballet Orchestras, joins Marcantonio Barone in the Suite for Flute and Piano Opus 34, a lyrical and emotional piece written in 1877 by the French organist and composer Charles-Marie Widor, organist of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame of Paris. The suite was dedicated to Paul Taffanel, originator of a new technique of flute playing that made this instrument so prominent in French music.
Cyrus Beroukhim, Emily Daggett-Smith and Alberto Parrini gather on stage, joined by violist Catherine Beeson a performer with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and the New York City Opera National Company, to perform Prokofiev’s String Quartet No.1 in B minor, one of the composer’s two string quartets. It was written in 1930 while the composer was in Paris, in response to a commission by the United States Library of Congress, and first performed in Washington, D.C. in April 1931 and in August in Moscow. It is described as an emotional, intense work, especially the final movement, which Prokofiev liked so much that he wrote a version of it for string orchestra.
Receptions included with the concerts offer tasty refreshments and a time to chat with the musicians.
Tickets at $18 for adults, $15 for seniors and students and $5 for children, will be available at the door or by calling (610) 294-9361. The Friday evening series is held at the historic Upper Tinicum Lutheran Church off Route 32, one mile north of the Frenchtown Bridge in Upper Black Eddy. The Sunday afternoon concerts are at Delaware Valley University’s Life Sciences Auditorium on New Britain Road at the State Street exit off Route 611 bypass in Doylestown.
A special Children’s Concert in the Round will be held at 10 A.M. Saturday, March 9th at Delaware Valley University’s Life Sciences Auditorium. Children’s tickets are $2, adults free. All concerts are supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts.
