The second-ever winter series of the long-running Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival opens this week for a set of three programs over three months that will include a world premiere, a further exploration of two off-the-beaten path composers, and the appearance of a masterwork the festival is tackling for the first time in its two-decade history.
Launched last year, the PBCMF fall festival offers loyal followers of the group a chance to extend their summer listening, and recruits new audiences through the fall venues, which are different than they are in the hot months.
“We’re hoping to reach some new people that maybe haven’t known us before, and that hopefully will be encouraged to come and see us next summer as well,” said flutist Karen Dixon, one of the three musicians who founded the festival in 1992.
The concerts are set for 7:30 p.m. Thursdays at Lynn University’s Amarnick-Goldstein Concert Hall, Fridays at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lake Worth, and Saturdays at the Lighthouse ArtCenter in Tequesta (except for the third week, when the concert is planned for a Wednesday).
“We’re feeling hopeful that we’ll have pretty full halls,” Dixon said, adding that it will help that the concerts are at smaller venues than in the summer, such as the Amarnick-Goldstein. “It’s better-suited for what it is that we do.”
The program this week (Thursday through Saturday) features one of the festival’s favorite composers, the Czech master Bohuslav Martinů, who is represented here by his La Revue de Cuisine, a wry and funny sextet for clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, violin, cello and piano. Written in 1927, it’s a short ballet score about romantic intrigue in the world of kitchen utensils, when the marriage of Pot and Lid is imperiled by other suitors.
More importantly, the music is a rich reflection of the explosion in popular music that had invaded society, thanks in no small measure to the spread of recordings and the growth of the new technology of radio; the four-part score includes a tango and a Charleston, the big dance craze of the late 1920s.
Also on the program are two duos, one for flute and piano by Aaron Copland, and the other for clarinet and violin by the German composer and violinist Adolph Busch. The Copland duo is a late piece, essentially a three-movement sonata, premiered in 1971 but reflective of Copland’s populist manner of the 1940s and not the serialist side heard in a work like the Piano Variations or Connotations.
“It’s been years since I’ve played it, I’ve always loved it, it’s a beautiful piece,” said Dixon, who will be accompanied by pianist Elaine Rinaldi, director of Orchestra Miami. “I also like the story behind it, which is that it was commissioned by William Kincaid’s students.”
Kincaid, who was the principal flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra for nearly 40 years, is considered the grandfather of American flute playing, and Copland was approached by his students to write a memorial work after Kincaid’s death in 1967. “All of his students through the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s filled pretty much every principal chair in every major orchestra in the United States,” she said of Kincaid. “And his legacy got passed down to all of us through them.”
Busch was best known as the lead violinist for the Busch Quartet, but as the Nazi regime took control of the country, he found himself revolted by its anti-Semitism and what that had done for his Jewish colleagues such as Rudolf Serkin. Busch emigrated to the United States in 1938, where he and Serkin were among the co-founders of the Marlboro School of Music in Vermont in 1950.
The program opens with an arrangement of one of the many baryton trios of Franz Joseph Haydn. The baryton was a cello-like instrument that is now obsolete, but which was the favorite instrument of Haydn’s employer, Prince Nicholas Esterhazy, and so his staff composer cranked out 175 works for the instrument, including more than 100 trios the prince could play with other musicians. Although some specialist musicians have recorded these works with an actual baryton, the music is usually heard in arrangements for other instruments. The flute, violin and cello trio performed this week is No. 100 in G (Hob. XI: 100).
For the second series of concerts, the festival returns to music by the French composer Claude Arrieu, pen name of Louise-Marie Simon (1903-1990). The musicians played her dectet in last summer’s concerts; this fall, it’s Arrieu’s Suite en quatre, for wind quartet. The program also includes the wind quartet of the American composer Arthur Berger (1912-2003), written in 1941 and perhaps his best-known piece. Berger is usually grouped with other members of the Second Boston School such as Irving Fine and Harold Shapero, and in the case of this Berger piece, the influence of Stravinsky is quite strong.
“It’s really a fun piece, and we thought it would be a nice companion piece with the Arrieu,” Dixon said.
Beethoven’s Eyeglasses Duo for viola and cello makes a return appearance on the festival programs, this time played by violist Rebecca Diderrich and cellist Ashley Garritson, and the concert ends with the String Trio No. 2 (in B-flat, D. 581) of Schubert, one of only two works by the composer in this form, and the only one to be a complete work (the first trio, also in the same key, has only one complete movement).
The last series includes a world premiere, a wind quintet by Marshall Turkin, an 88-year-old retired orchestra executive and longtime Boca Raton resident who runs the popular Mostly Music series at Lynn University and founded The Symphonia Boca Raton. Turkin describes his Century Souvenirs as a lighter work, and the three movements — South Side Saga, Departed Pride, and Farewell Quintet — have evocative subtitles referring to composers Leonard Bernstein, Bedrich Smetana and Haydn.
“It’s a tribute to three different composers,” Dixon said. “It’s going to be fun, and we’re very excited to be presenting this as a world premiere. It’s an honor for us.”
Finding great pleasure this past summer in playing the music of the French composer George Onslow, the musicians dig deeper into this prolific chamber music writer’s oeuvre, with the Woodwind Quintet in F (Op. 81). Like the nonet from this summer, the Onslow is cannily composed for the five instruments, with good sound experiments and a melodic facility that is grateful on the ear.
“We had a great response from our audience for (Onslow and Arrieu), and we wanted to explore more of their music,” Dixon said.
For the last work of the winter season, the festival players will perform the Piano Trio No. 1 (in D minor, Op. 49) of Felix Mendelssohn, one of his best-loved works. Rinaldi will be joined by two members of the Delray String Quartet, violinist Mei Mei Luo and cellist Claudio Jaffé.
“Believe it or not, we’ve never played this piece on the festival before. It’s such a tour de force, and it’s one of those pieces that we’ve wanted to program for a long time,” she said.
The Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s fall series opens Thursday at Lynn University’s Amarnick-Goldstein Concert Hall, repeats Friday at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lake Worth, and Saturday at the Lighthouse ArtCenter in Tequesta. All concerts begin at 7:30 p.m., and tickets are $25. For more information, call 800-330-6874 or visit www.pbcmf.org.