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X-WR-CALNAME:Bowdoin Music Festival
X-ORIGINAL-URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org
X-WR-CALDESC:Events for Bowdoin Music Festival
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DTSTART:20270314T070000
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20270201T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20270201T210000
DTSTAMP:20261029T075244
CREATED:20260909T182153Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261002T144942Z
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SUMMARY:Balourdet Quartet
DESCRIPTION:Music at the Mill: Balourdet Quartet \nJoin us at Dutchman’s in Brunswick for our winter Music at the Mill Concert. The evening includes a wine and beer social hour\, chamber music concert\, and gourmet pizza reception. \nThe Balourdet Quartet\, alumni of the Festival’s String Quartet Fellowship\, returns to Brunswick! The Quartet was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant and Chamber Music America’s Cleveland Quartet Award in 2024 and was recently named the inaugural fellow of the Resonance String Quartet Fellowship. Read more about the Balourdet. \n  \nBalourdet Quartet\nAngela Bae\, Justin DeFilippis\, violin • Benjamin Zannoni\, viola • Russell Houston\, cello \nBÉLA BARTÓK (1881–1945)\nString Quartet No. 6\, Sz. 114  \nJOHANNES BRAHMS (1833–1897)\nString Sextet No. 1 in B-flat Major\, Op. 18\nAngela Bae\, Justin DeFilippis\, violin • Benjamin Zannoni\, Phillip Ying\, viola • Russell Houston\, David Ying\, cello \n  \n— \nVideo: Balourdet Quartet Plays Brahms \n \n\n  \n6:00 PM: Doors and Bar Open\nJoin us for beer and wine before the concert. \n7:00 PM: Concert \n8:15 PM: Post-Concert Reception\nJoin us in the restaurant after the concert for delicious pizza and to chat with the artists. Pizza\, beer\, and wine are included with your ticket purchase. \n  \n\n  \nProgram Notes \nBÉLA BARTÓK\nString Quartet No. 6\, Sz. 114 (1939) \nBéla Bartók’s sixth string quartet\, composed in 1939\, represents the final installment in one of the great cycles of twentieth-century chamber music. It is also an artifact of a tumultuous time in geopolitics\, on the eve of World War II. Bartók was morally troubled\, not to mention professionally inconvenienced\, by the 1938 annexation of Austria by Hitler’s Germany. His publisher\, Universal Editions\, had become Nazified\, with Bartók required to make bogus declarations about his “racial” identity. Meanwhile\, he feared the potential implications for neighboring Hungary: “There is danger of seeing Hungary\, too\, handed over to this regime of robbery and murder.” At once a fervent patriot who had witnessed his nation’s independence from Austria two decades prior\, and a committed internationalist who sat on the artistic committee of the League of Nations\, Bartók faced a dilemma: should Hungary be annexed\, “it would be my duty to exile myself\, if possible\,” he reasoned. “But it would cause me immense trouble and moral anguish to make my living in a foreign country.” \nBartók was invited to take refuge in Switzerland thanks to Paul Sacher\, a conductor and major patron of modernist music\, who had recently commissioned Bartók’s Musique for Strings\, Percussion\, and Celesta. Bartók seized the opportunity and settled in Saanen\, near Bern\, for the summer of 1939\, distracting himself by composing a Divertimento for Sacher’s chamber orchestra and beginning his sixth quartet. But Bartók’s progress was brutally interrupted by news of his mother’s death\, and he returned to Budapest and completed the quartet under adverse circumstances. It is difficult not to feel Bartók’s anguish\, both at the state of Europe and at the loss of his mother\, in the insistent indication “Mesto” (Sad) with which he characterizes each movement.  \nThe sixth quartet was the last work Bartók completed in Europe. In 1940\, he and his family immigrated to the United States\, where Bartók spent his remaining years in what he described as “comfortable exile.” It is on a similar\, gently uplifting note that his final quartet concludes: open fifths in the violins\, and an enigmatic sequence of magical harmonies\, plucked by the cellist\, left to resonate. \n  \nJOHANNES BRAHMS\nString Sextet No. 1 in B-flat Major\, Op. 18 (1859–1860) \nDespite trying his hand at string quartets during the 1860s\, the specter of Beethoven’s quartets continued to loom over the genre. Brahms would not feel satisfied with his attempts until 1873\, when he was nearly 40. String quintets\, meanwhile\, were the province of Mozart (in two viola configuration) and Schubert (in two cello configuration)\, and Brahms’ early attempts to compose string quintets would prove even more frustrating: his first essay in that genre was eventually reworked as his Piano Quintet\, and he would not venture another string quintet until the 1880s. \nHowever\, in contrast to quartets and quintets\, the string sextet offered unfamiliar ground\, with few precedents since the sextets of Luigi Boccherini over half a century prior. Young Brahms\, exceedingly conscious of music history and anxious about his place in it\, felt more confident experimenting with the larger\, less trodden ensemble. He composed this first example at the age of 27\, and a second one five years later. His success in these pieces can be measured by the litany of composers — including Dvořák\, Dohnányi\, Schoenberg\, Schulhoff\, and Strauss\, among others — who\, undaunted\, took up the form in turn. \nThe scope of the composition is vast. Brahms spins no end of new melodies\, including a theme in the style of a Viennese waltz which returns\, in quiet pizzicato\, to conclude the first movement. The second movement is a magisterial set of variations on a dolorous theme\, introduced first in the lower strings\, and then echoed with heightened intensity by the first violin. The third movement\, a Scherzo\, shows Brahms’ craft in displacing the strong beats of the meter\, while in the buoyant Trio (the middle section of the Scherzo)\, he instead displaces the tonal center from one phrase to the next. And in the Rondo finale\, Brahms pits various subdivisions of the ensemble against each other\, introducing the main theme in the lower trio of instruments\, after which the upper trio are allowed to respond. \nProgram Notes by Peter Asimov \n\n  \nMILL SERIES SPONSORS
URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/music-at-the-mill-february-1/
LOCATION:Dutchman’s at Fort Andross\, 14 Maine Street\, Brunswick\, ME\, 04011\, United States
CATEGORIES:Concert,Ticketed Events,Music at the Mill
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DTSTART;TZID=America/New_York:20270419T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/New_York:20270419T210000
DTSTAMP:20261029T075244
CREATED:20260909T182350Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20261002T145900Z
UID:25127-1808161200-1808168400@www.bowdoinfestival.org
SUMMARY:Ying Quartet with Jeewon Park
DESCRIPTION:Music at the Mill: Ying Quartet with Jeewon Park \nJoin us at Dutchman’s in Brunswick for our spring Music at the Mill Concert. The evening includes a wine and beer social hour\, chamber music concert\, and gourmet pizza reception. The performance features the Ying Quartet teaming up with pianist Jeewon Park for Brahms’ beloved Piano Quintet. \n  \nYing Quartet\nRobin Scott\, Janet Ying\, violin • Phillip Ying\, viola • David Ying\, cello \nJOHANNES BRAHMS\nPiano Quintet in F Minor\, Op. 34\nRobin Scott\, Janet Ying\, violin • Phillip Ying\, viola • David Ying\, cello • Jeewon Park\, piano \nAdditional repertoire to be announced. \n  \n\n  \n6:00 PM: Doors and Bar Open\nJoin us for beer and wine before the concert. \n7:00 PM: Concert \n8:15 PM: Post-Concert Reception\nJoin us in the restaurant after the concert for delicious pizza and to chat with the artists. Pizza\, beer\, and wine are included with your ticket purchase. \n  \n\n  \nProgram Notes \nJOHANNES BRAHMS\nPiano Quintet in F Minor\, Op. 34 (1864) \nBrahms’ Piano Quintet belongs to an outpouring of chamber music from the early 1860s — the period musicologists generally call Brahms’ “first maturity” — which also gave rise to his two string sextets\, his first two piano quartets\, and the horn trio. The style Brahms cultivated during these years is partly accountable to his historicist sensibility: his appreciation for the large-scale formal arcs and emotional intensity of Beethoven\, to be sure\, but also his study of the unhurried melodies and harmonic sorcery of Schubert\, whose instrumental music was considerably less known at that time. \nBut the final form of the Piano Quintet is also the result of Brahms’ dialogue with a trusted coterie of performers who offered critical feedback. The musical substance began its life scored for string quintet\, with two cellos (suggesting that Brahms was keeping the score of Schubert’s glorious cello quintet nearby). He presented this version of the work to violinist Joseph Joachim\, a close friend and tireless advocate of Brahms’ work. After rehearsing the work with colleagues\, Joachim disclosed his misgivings to Brahms: “every line shows proof of an almost overwhelming creative strength\, full of spirit through and through.” But\, Joachim continued\, “the instrumentation is not energetic enough to my ears to convey the powerful rhythmic convulsions; the sound is almost helplessly thin for the musical thought. Then again for long stretches everything lies too thickly. You surely can’t like it either: it sounds artificial!” After some unsatisfactory attempts to salvage the work as a string quintet\, Brahms (always the perfectionist) burned the score\, and decided to rearrange the work as a Sonata for Two Pianos. It was in this form that Op. 34 received its premiere in 1864\, Brahms playing with Karl Tausig\, a student of Liszt. But when Brahms shared this version with Clara Schumann\, his confidante betrayed her own doubts: “The first time I played it I had the impression it was an arrangement. It cannot be called a sonata; rather\, it is a work whose ideas you could — and should — distribute among the whole orchestra\, as though out of a horn of plenty!” Perhaps it is fitting\, then\, that Brahms ultimately found the perfect compromise in the Piano Quintet formation — something of a hybrid\, preserving the best elements of both previous ventures — a genre which had been pioneered by Robert Schumann two decades prior. Unlike the string quintet\, however\, Brahms did not destroy the two-piano version\, which continues to enjoy occasional performance to this day. \nProgram Note by Peter Asimov \n  \n\n  \nMILL SERIES SPONSORS
URL:https://www.bowdoinfestival.org/event/music-at-the-mill-april-19/
LOCATION:Dutchman’s at Fort Andross\, 14 Maine Street\, Brunswick\, ME\, 04011\, United States
CATEGORIES:Concert,Ticketed Events,Music at the Mill
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