Series Includes New Commission, Redoubtable Icons and Intimate Music Setting
Chamber Music Palisades begins its second decade of concerts in the Palisades on October 23, with a program including Debussy’s familiar ‘Afternoon of a Faune’ for flute and piano, and rediscovered Holocaust composer Ervin Schulhoff’s ‘Concertino’ for flute, viola and bass. ‘Amazingly, we haven’t worked through all the chamber literature,’ co-founder Susan Greenberg says. ‘We really haven’t done most of this music, except for Turina’s piano trio, which audiences loved a few seasons ago. For the most part, Greenberg and co-founder Delores Stevens look for chamber works’some old, some new and some in between–that are challenges for them, but also intended to ‘keep everybody happy.’ Greenberg and Stevens begin to prepare for each upcoming season at the first of the year, when the two banter around ideas, with the hope of beginning to sign up the musicians by spring. ‘This is the hardest part, because these players are so busy and so good,’ Greenberg says. ‘Most of the players, even those with international reputations, like Ida Levin, live in the Los Angeles area.’ A new addition to the concert roster this year is cellist Antonio Lysy, who not only concertizes around the world, but is a professor of cello at UCLA. Over the years, Chamber Music Palisades has presented the finest players in Los Angeles, including artists from the L.A. Philharmonic and the L.A. Chamber Orchestra in the intimate setting at St. Matthew’s Parish. KUSC’s afternoon host Alan Chapman will once again provide commentary on each concert. This year, CMP is introducing a scholarship for a young chamber ensemble and expanding its school outreach programs to five. ‘Thanks to a grant from the Palisades Junior Women’s Club, we will be able to present two concerts in the Palisades, this year at Calvary School,’ Greenberg says. The music series opens with a diverse program featuring a mix of masterworks and rarely performed pieces by Debussy, Mozart, Schulhoff and Schubert on Tuesday, October 23 at 8 p.m., at St. Matthew’s Parish. The artists featured include Susan Greenberg, flute, Roland Kato, viola, Arman Ksajikian, cello, and Josefina Vergara, violin, all of who are members of Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, as well as soloist and chamber musician Delores Stevens, piano, and Nico Abondolo, who served as principal bass of San Francisco’s New Century Chamber Orchestra for eight years. Stevens and Greenberg launch the program with a rarely performed arrangement for flute and piano of ‘Afternoon of a Faun’ by Impressionistic French composer Claude Debussy. A pastoral and expressive work shaded with delicate and graceful musical overtones, it was inspired by the poem ‘L’Apres-midi d’un faune’ by French symbolist poet Mallarm’. Vergara, Stevens and Ksajikian, take the stage next with W.A. Mozart’s sparkling ‘Trio in B-flat Major’ K. 358 for violin, cello and piano, which is a transcription of one of four piano sonatas that Mozart composed for four hands for his sister Anna Maria and himself. Greenberg, Kato and Abondolo perform Concertino for flute, viola and bass, written by Czech composer Ervin Schulhoff in 1925. Schulhoff, of Jewish-German decent, found inspiration in the rhythms of jazz and the avant-garde cultural movement of Dadaism after World War I, but was blacklisted in the 1930s by the Nazi regime and died of tuberculosis in August 1942 at the W’lzburg concentration camp. The concert concludes with The ‘Trout’ Quintet for piano and strings by prolific Austrian composer Franz Schubert. Written in 1819, when Schubert was 22 years old, the work was not published until 1829, a year after his death, but has become one of his most popular and beloved chamber pieces. Chamber Music Palisades’ season continues with concerts on January 22, March 25, and May 6, which features the world premiere Adrienne Albert’s world premiere quartet for flute and strings. Tickets are $25; students with ID are free. St. Matthew’s Parish, 1031 Bienveneda. For tickets and information, please call (310) 459-2070 or visit www.cmpalisades.org.