FANTASY FINALE
Sunday, August 22, 6:30 pm
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

From Haydn comes a piano trio that provoked comment for its “bold harmonic sequences”—a masterly work from a figure we love for being predictably unpredictable. A new work arrives from lyrically inclined Russell Platt, and we sample Vaughan Williams’ Phantasy Quintet, a youthful outpouring filled with the folkloric flavor that would become that composer’s signature. It’s balanced by a quintet Brahms wrote when he was 57, though a friend wrote to him: “The person who can have invented all this must be in a happy frame of mind! One feels you must have been celebrating, say, your thirtieth birthday.”

Program

HAYDN
Piano Trio in A-flat Major, Hob. XV:14
RUSSELL PLATT
Memoir for Flute and Piano (2010) (world premiere)
VAUGHAN-WILLIAMS
Phantasy Quintet
BRAHMS
Viola Quintet in G Major, Op. 111

Artists

Marya Martin, David Bowlin, Stefan Jackiw, Misha Amory, Hsin-Yun Huang, Edward Arron,
Shai Wosner

FAMILY CONCERT – SOUNDS OF NATURE
Saturday, August 14, 6:00-7:00 pm 
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

(children ages five and older)

Special Guest: Alan Alda

In some primeval era, music must have grown out of the sounds of the natural world. Quite a few composers have stayed in touch with the origins of their art. Bartók’s violins become whining mosquitos, Rimsky-Korsakov captures a buzzing bumblebee in flying figuration, and Stravinsky offers a vision of an elephant ballet. Saint-Saëns paints a whole gallery of creatures from land, sea, and air, with tongue firmly planted in cheek. This program is crafted to appeal to younger listeners as well as more experienced concertgoers.

Program

BARTÓK
Mosquito Dance for Violin Duo, Sz. 98, No. 26
RIMSKY-KORSAKOV
Flight of the Bumblebee from The Tale of Tsar Saltan
STRAVINSKY
Circus Polka
SAINT-SAËNS
Carnival of the Animals

Artists

Marya Martin, Romie de Guise-Langlois, Juliette Kang, Jessica Lee, Nokuthula Ngwenyama,
Eric Bartlett, Donald Palma, Pedja Muzijevic, Gilles Vonsattel, Ayano Kataoka

Narrator: Alan Alda

SKIPPING A CENTURY
Wednesday, August 18, 7:30 pm
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

Two masterworks of the nineteenth century keep company with a pair of contenders from the twenty-first. Time stands still in Schubert’s magical Notturno, an outtake originally intended for one of his full-scale piano trios. We find Brahms at his most luxurious in his A-major Piano Quartet; this longest of his chamber works displays the complexity and variety we expect of its composer. Transparent, luminous textures mark the music of both Sean Hickey and Bruce MacCombie. Anyone who heard MacCombie’s “Greeting” we performed last season won’t want to miss this new work commissioned by the festival.

Program

SCHUBERT
Notturno in E-flat Major for Piano Trio, D. 897
SEAN HICKEY
Left at the Fork in the Road for Flute, Clarinet and Bassoon (2003)
BRUCE MACCOMBIE
Light Upon the Turning Leaf for Flute, Clarinet, Bassoon, Violin, Viola, Cello and Piano
(BCMF commission)
BRAHMS
Piano Quartet in A Major, Op. 26

Artists

Marya Martin, Anthony McGill, Judith LeClair, Stefan Jackiw, Beth Guterman, Edward Arron,
Shai Wosner

Seating Areas:

SUBTLE SOUNDS
Sunday, August 15, 6:30 pm
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

Last year the music world sighed farewell to Leon Kirchner, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer who once remarked that his goal was “to possibly reveal the necessary intimacies between the past and present, which keep the art of music alive and well.” In this concert, a pair of his finely wrought chamber works are framed by classics of comparable finesse: a rarely encountered flute quartet by Mozart and Fauré’s Second Piano Quartet, in which the composer recalls the sound of church bells that wafted towards the village where he lived as a child.

Program

MOZART
Flute Quartet in G Major, K. 285a
LEON KIRCHNER
Piano Trio No. 1 (1954)
Flutings for Flute and Percussion (1973)
FAURÉ
Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor, Op. 45

Artists

Marya Martin, Juliette Kang, Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Fred Sherry, Gilles Vonsattel, Ayano Kataoka

WM. BRIAN LITTLE CONCERT – BUCOLIC BESTIARY
Friday, August 13, 6:00 pm – Wine tasting and appetizers; 7:00 pm Concert
Channing Sculpture Garden

Special Guest: Alan Alda

The friends and family of Brian Little invite you to enjoy a special musical evening with Alan Alda along with wines from Channing Daughters under our tent at the Channing Sculpture Garden. We’ll encounter Debussy’s famous faun, dreaming suggestive dreams, in a chamber arrangement made for connoisseurs who frequented a private musical society founded by Schoenberg. A “pet chatterbox” comes alive—thanks to San Francisco composer-and-pianist Stephen Prutsman—in a work for piano four-hands. To conclude, we open the doors of Saint-Saëns’ menagerie of lions and tortoises and kangaroos and their kin, in an irresistible interweaving of spoken and musical story-telling.

Program

DEBUSSY
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
STEPHEN PRUTSMAN
Sarah’s Band and Her Pet Chatterbox for Two Pianos (2006)
SAINT-SAËNS
Carnival of the Animals

Artists

Marya Martin, John Snow, Romie de Guise-Langlois, Juliette Kang, Jessica Lee,
Nokuthula Ngwenyama, Eric Bartlett, Donald Palma, Pedja Muzijevic, Gilles Vonsattel,
Ayano Kataoka

BCMF: OFFBEAT- PATHFINDERS
Wednesday, August 11, 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

This trio of piano, cello, and percussion presents new works by the British composer Richard Baker, a meticulous craftsman of a composer, and the American Paul Lansky, whose works often involve creative use of language or reflect linguistic theory. Jacob Ter Velduis (a.k.a. JacobTV) is an “avant-pop”composer from Holland who proclaims, “I pepper my music with sugar”; his Things Like That combines live performance with fragments of jazz recordings by Anita O’Day. From New York composer Annie Gosfield comes a fascinating work written for her frequent collaborators at Bang-on-A-Can from where Real Quiet sprouted.

Program

RICHARD BAKER
Gaming (2010) (world premiere)
PAUL LANSKY
Horizons (2010) (world premiere)
JACOB TER VELDHUIS
Things Like That (2009)
ANNIE GOSFIELD
Manufacture of Tangled Ivory (1995)

Artists

Real Quiet – Andrew Russo, David Cossin, Felix Fan

HELPING HANDS
Sunday, August 8, 6:30 pm
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

Composers sometimes collaborate with one another, even across the centuries. Mozart never got around to finishing his G-major String Trio movement, so it was left to a later composer-editor to massage it into performable shape. In other cases, composers may use pre-existing works as springboards for original creations: Arvo Pärt recasts a Mozart piano sonata into a trio, Paul Brantley realizes an evocative piano partnership for Debussy’s Syrinx. Schumann was one of music’s great originals (and a bicentennial birthday boy this year), but his evergreen Piano Quartet builds on his predecessors, and especially on the fugal splendor of Bach.

Program

MOZART
String Trio Movement in G Major, K. 562e
ARVO PÄRT
Mozart-Adagio for Piano Trio (1997)
DEBUSSY
Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp
PAUL BRANTLEY
Syrinx-double: A meditation on and after Debussy for Flute and Piano (2007)
SCHUMANN
Piano Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 47

Artists

Marya Martin, David Bowlin, Cynthia Phelps, Carter Brey, Jeremy Denk, Jeewon Park, Emmanuel Ceysson

BCMF: OFFBEAT- PRIMED FOR DISCOVERY
Thursday, August 5, 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

This foursome is a chameleon among string quartets, comfortably crossing boundaries to touch down in terrain we don’t often associate with classic chamber ensembles. Whatever pathways today’s composers want to explore, Ethel is eager to follow. In the process, these four open-minded musicians have turned into composers themselves. This program includes compositions by each of the group’s multi-talented members, along with other works in which classical traditions rub shoulders with up-to-date musical exploration.

Program

MARCELLO ZARVOS
Arrival (2000)
DOROTHY LAWSON
Grandmother (2006)
TERRY RILEY
Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector (1980)
MARY ROWELL
Soft Shoe (2008)
CORNELIUS DUFALLO
Aphelion (2008)
RALPH FARRIS
2fer (2009)
PHIL KLINE
The Blue Room and Other Stories (2002)

Artists

ETHEL – Cornelius Dufallo, Mary Rowell, Ralph Farris, Dorothy Lawson

MUSICAL MÉLANGE
Wednesday, August 4, 7:30 pm
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

Op. 1, No. 1—this lowest possible opus number signals the beginning of Beethoven’s career as a published composer. He may have started composing this trio even before he moved from his native Bonn to Vienna, or maybe it coincided with his studies in Vienna under Haydn, who understandably praised this piece at its premiere. Eric Ewazen provides a listener-friendly song cycle for singer and chamber ensemble, and an all-star assembly of string players unveils a rich-toned, ever-so-Russian quintet written in 1892 by Alexander Glazunov, a figure increasingly championed by chamber aficionados.

Program

BEETHOVEN
Piano Trio No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 1, No. 1
ERIC EWAZEN
SeaSkye Songs for Flute, Violin, Cello, Piano, Soprano and Percussion (2010) (world premiere version)
GLAZUNOV
Cello Quintet in A Major, Op. 39

Artists

Marya Martin, Ani Kavafian, Arnaud Sussmann, Cynthia Phelps, Carter Brey,
Peter Wiley, Jeewon Park, Susan Narucki, Ayano Kataoka

MUSIC RICHLY RINGING
Sunday, August 1, 6:30 pm
Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church

“When our own Bach’s music richly rings, he puts great Orpheus himself to shame,” proclaimed a Dresden newspaper in 1731. Here we sample the variety of Bach’s melodious gifts in works instrumental and vocal, secular and sacred. Two of his most admired concertos are played by an ensemble proportioned similarly to those he directed himself, providing a glimpse of just what his contemporaries found so ravishing—and what continues to enchant listeners nearly three centuries later.

Program

J.S. BACH:
Triple Concerto in A Minor, for Flute, Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1044
Doch weichet, ihr tollen from Cantata No. 8
Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins, BWV 1043
Ja, ja, ich halte Jesum feste from Cantata No. 157
Schafe können sicher weiden from Cantata No. 208
Brandenburg No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050

Artists

Marya Martin, Karen Gomyo, Ani Kavafian, Jessica Lee, Jesse Mills, Choong-Jin Chang,
Christian Poltéra, Jeffrey Beecher, Paolo Bordignon, Randall Scarlata