Tickets $18 for general audiences, $14.50 for students, children over age 12, IA Course participants & seniors 60+.  Children age 12 and under: free.  Tickets available by calling the Sondheim Center box office at 641-472-2787.  www.sondheimcenter.com

Red Cedar Chamber Music’s Rural Outreach program presents Vienna by Starlight at the Sondheim Center at 200 N. Main St. in Fairfield, Iowa at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 7, 2009.  Guest artists, the Avalon String Quartet join Red Cedar Chamber Music flutist Jan Boland and guitarist John Dowdall to perform quartets and quintets by Beethoven, Hugo Wolf, Mozart and Luigi Boccherini.

Sponsorship for Rural Outreach Concerts is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, the James & Norma Jean Rosborough Foundation, Chamber Music America, the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs, and the Alliant Energy Foundation.  The Avalon Quartet is sponsored by Margaret Haupt and George J. Naxera Jr. Additional support is provided by the Chamber Music Society Fairfield and businesses in Fairfield.

Vienna by Starlight! offers listeners the opportunity to experience the cultural glow of 19th–c. Vienna through music by Mozart, Beethoven Hugo Wolf and Luigi Boccherini.  The concert opens with the two-movement Quartet in C Major for flute, violin, viola and cello written as a commission in late 1777 when Mozart was on the cusp of turning 22.  Its lovely melodies and delicate style epitomize the elegance and beauty of the classical Viennese style.  In the following “quartetto serioso”, String Quartet in F minor, Op. 95 by Beethoven, Mozart’s classical purity is tempered by the strident energy, austerity and poignancy of emerging romanticism.  The four-movement F minor quartet is an emotional rollercoaster, moving from brash and assertive to somber and pensive, before finally offering solace and hope at the close with a brief, manically enthusiastic and life-affirming scherzo.

The concert’s final two works by Hugo Wolf and Luigi Boccherini reflect a more Mediterranean humor with an ample supply of beautiful melodies and engaging rhythms that call forth visions of warm evenings in Italy and Spain. Wolf’s Italian Serenade, an exuberant, one-movement string quartet filled with the airy lightness of a sunny day at the beach and the coquettish flirting of a young Italian beauty, is a quick and easy alternative to a holiday in Naples.  Boccherini, although an Italian who lived and composed primarily in Spain, had several successful sojourns in Vienna in his teens and early twenties, during which he established a reputation as a virtuoso bass player and composer.  Fortunately his Spanish experience prompted him to compose a series of quintets for guitar and string quartet.  Vienna by Starlight! concludes with the most famous of these quintets, which ends with an energetic Fandango, imbued with indigenous Spanish character and the lively rhythms of flamenco folk music.

    PROGRAM

Quartet in C major KV Anh. 171

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Allegro         

Andantino / Theme & Variations             

Quartet No. 11 in  F minor, Op. 95       Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827)

Allegro con brio

Allegretto ma non troppo

Allegro assai vivace ma serioso

Più allegro

Larghetto espressivo – Allegretto agitato      

    INTERMISSION

Italian Serenade  in G Major for

String Quartet

Hugo Wolf (1860-1903)

Quintet No. 4, G448 for guitar and string quartet

Luigi Boccherini  (1743-1805)

Pastorale

Allegro maestoso

Grave assai

Fandango                   

Listen to

Boccherini’s: Fandango

Avalon String Quartet: Cellist Cheng-Hou Lee, violinists Blaise Magniere and Marie Wang and violist Anthony Devroye

Red Cedar Chamber Music:

Jan Boland, flute and John Dowdall, guitar

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Hailed as "one of the most exciting young string quartets in America" (The Washington Post) the Avalon String Quartet (cellist Cheng-Hou Lee, violinists Blase Magniere and Marie Wang and violist Anthony Devroye), was formed in 1995 at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Isaac Stern invited the Quartet to perform in the Isaac Stern Chamber Music Encounters in Jerusalem and in March 2000 they presented their Carnegie Hall debut. The quartet won First Prize, the Channel Classics Prize, and the 1999 Concert Artists Guild Competition.  In 2000 the quartet won top prize at the ARD Competition in Munich, Germany.  The quartet is in residence at Northern Illinois University, a position formerly occupied by the distinguished Vermeer Quartet.  Dedicated educators, the Avalons have taught at the Interlochen Quartet Institute, the Green Lake Music Camp in Wisconsin, the Britten-Pears School in England and the Juilliard School.  The Quartet's live performances and conversation have been featured on, National Public Radio's Performance Today, Canada's CBC, Australia's ABC and France Musique.

Currently celebrating its twelfth season, Red Cedar Chamber Music continually strives to reach, challenge, and expand audiences that rarely have the opportunity to attend chamber music performances.  Core ensemble members and Red Cedar founders, flutist, Jan Boland and guitarist, John Dowdall, collaborate with the finest chamber musicians from across the country to treat Eastern Iowa audiences to equal doses of the antique and the avant-garde.  They recently were featured performers for the Central California Flute Festival and have performed at the National Museum in Prague, the Kennedy Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Red Cedar’s Rural Outreach program has been funded by the National Endowment for the Arts four years in a row, including the upcoming 2009-2010 season.  In May 2007 Red Cedar was honored as one of only four organizations nationwide to receive a three-year Residency Partnership Program grant from Chamber Music America to support its educational performances.  Red Cedar Chamber Music has released eight award-winning compact discs on the Fleur De Son Classics label, receiving a Critics' Choice award from the American Record Guide, which stated, "Chamber music should be just like this-intimate, bonding and conversational."  John Dowdall studied guitar at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna and holds a Masters degree in musicology from the University of Iowa.  Jan Boland holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts degree from the University of Iowa.  Together they administer Red Cedar Chamber Music; Jan is the Executive Director and John is the Artistic Director.

Design and copyright 2009 Freddy Niagara Fonseca

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