After 32 years, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, long a beloved staple of South Florida summers, will come to an end this month. Battered by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated loss of funds, as well as tiring of the grind of putting together four weekends of concerts, the founders of the festival — flutist Karen Fuller, clarinetist Michael Forte and bassoonist … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, on hiatus, seeks funds to return in 2024
For the first time in 31 years, a July in Palm Beach County passed without the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival. Thrown off its tracks by adjustments for the COVID-19 pandemic and a drying up of donor funds, festival organizers called off the summer concert series they’ve been hosting since 1992. But it’s too soon to write an epitaph for the festival, which gave four … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival returns in one-week format
Over the 30 years that the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival has been presenting summer concerts, its musicians have presented more than 500 pieces, the majority of which have been pieces from worthy but infrequently visited corners of the repertoire. It’s a remarkable legacy, and its mix of adventurousness and first-rate playing can be explored on the six recordings its … [Read more...]
PB Chamber Music Festival returns scaled-down, but live, for 30th season
The 30th anniversary season concerts of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, which arrive this week, amount to a statement of survival. The series returns for one week and six concerts over three days from this Friday through Sunday, and will be presented, as always, in three different parts of the county. One of the venues will be wide open, the two others less so, with … [Read more...]
Rare Zemlinsky trio part of PBCMF’s unusual Program III choices
By Dennis D. Rooney Music for string quartet took up the first half of the third program of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s 28th season, which I saw Sunday at Delray Beach’s Crest Theatre. Flutist Karen Fuller joined violinists Dina Kostic and Claudia Cagnassone; violist Renée Reder; and cellist Susan Bergeron for the Nocturne and Scherzo by Arthur Foote … [Read more...]
Something for everyone as PB Chamber Music Fest opens 28th season
In this summer’s version of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival, the music ranges widely from canonical string and piano quartets to rarities for unusual combinations of instruments, as well as major utterances from overlooked composers of the past. In short, it contains all the elements listeners have come to expect from this festival, whose 28th anniversary season begins … [Read more...]
Fine performances of contemporary music stand out at Zimmermann’s
By Dennis Rooney Zimmermann’s Café Chamber Music is devoted to presenting the music of living composers resident in South Florida. Its biannual concerts are presented in the social room of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Lake Worth, where an audience of somewhere between 50 to 100 people gather at banquet tables to listen to the performances. The most appealing aspect of … [Read more...]
PBCMF IV: Charming American work tops festival finale
By Dennis D. Rooney The fourth and final program of the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival’s 27th season was composed of a local premiere and two works of 20th-century composers on its first half, and Schubert’s Trout Quintet on its second. Clarinetist Michael Forte’s prefatory remarks mentioned that Piotr Szewczyk (b. 1978), composer of Three Summer Sketches that opened … [Read more...]
PBCMF, Program I: Bubbly Bellini and strong Mendelssohn
By Dennis D. Rooney “Not a millennial in sight,” observed an elderly man whom I encountered on my way into the Helen K. Persson Concert Hall on the campus of Palm Beach Atlantic University last Friday. I had to agree. “Yes,” I replied, “the median age definitely skews older.” And it was an old audience who attended the inaugural program of the Palm Beach Chamber Music … [Read more...]
Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival 3: Welcome rarities, smartly played
By Dennis D. Rooney For the third program of its 26th season, which I saw Sunday at the Crest Theatre in Delray Beach, the Palm Beach Chamber Music Festival presented three works that each featured a founding member of the group. Karen Fuller Dixon performed Mozart’s Flute Quartet No. 1 (in D, K. 285) with violinist Dina Kostic, violist Rene Reder and cellist Susan … [Read more...]