Chamber music concerts usually come in standard packages — performances by string quartets, wind quintets, brass quintets, piano trios and soloists with piano accompaniment. ADVERTISING Chamber music concerts usually come in standard packages — performances by string quartets, wind quintets,
Chamber music concerts usually come in standard packages — performances by string quartets, wind quintets, brass quintets, piano trios and soloists with piano accompaniment.
Rarely does an audience, especially one far from a metropolis or one not attending a chamber music festival, have an opportunity to hear music composed for other mixes of classical instruments.
In the opening concert of the Hawaii Concert Society’s 2014-15 season, scheduled for Thursday, the Hilo audience will have the opportunity to hear three compositions for less common groupings of instruments when six Hawaii Symphony Orchestra musicians, joined by Jonathan Korth, piano, perform three chamber music gems, for various combinations of winds, strings and piano.
The concert begins at 7:30 p.m. at the University of Hawaii at Hilo Performing Arts Center.
Korth, who has been professor of piano at the UH-Manoa since 2008, made his Carnegie Hall debut in 2002 and has performed in numerous concert halls in Europe and the Far East. Symphony musicians Susan McGinn (flute), Scott Janusch (oboe), Jonathan Parrish (horn), Ethan Pernella (viola), Nancy Masaki (cello) and John Gallagher (double bass) also are members of Chamber Music Hawaii.
Founded in 1982, Chamber Music Hawaii is the state’s oldest organization supporting local, professional chamber musicians.
The Sept. 18 concert will begin with English composer Gustav Holst’s “Terzetto” for flute, oboe and piano. The piece is notable because the music for each of the instruments is in a different key.
Following it is contemporary American composer Eric Ewazen’s “Ballade, Pastorale and Dance” for flute, horn and piano. This composition uses simple melodies and harmonies, but the combination of instruments produces wonderfully contrasting colors and textures. Ewazen’s manipulation of the melodies and harmonies makes the simplicity engaging and intriguing.
The major work of the concert, which uses all seven musicians, is Johann Hummel’s “Septet in D minor.”
A contemporary and friend/rival of Beethoven and, like Beethoven, a young prodigy on the piano, Hummel’s compositions were respected by the great master and were highly popular in his day.
The attractive four-movement “Septet,” composed in 1816 in Vienna, was an immediate success. It is full of little surprises as first the piano and then the other instruments take turns in the spotlight.
Tickets are $25 for general admission, $20 for people 60 or older and $10 for students and are available at the Most Irresistible Shop, the UH-Hilo Performing Arts Center box office, Music Exchange and the East Hawaii Cultural Center.
Tickets also will be available starting at 6:45 p.m. the day of the concert at the UH-Hilo box office.
