THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503170073
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E11 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: Mark Mobley
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
IT'S AN extremely strong week for chamber music in Hampton Roads. After a recital by the leading exponent of early piano literature, a prominent string quartet and first-rate singers will visit.
Monday, Old Dominion University welcomes Malcolm Bilson for a performance of sonatas by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. This won't be the average piano recital - Bilson plays the fortepiano, the name now used for the piano's lighter-toned forerunner. The instrument in this case will be a 1991 Chris Moone fortepiano, modeled on a 1785 Viennese keyboard of the type these composers would have known well.
Bilson's program includes Haydn's Sonata in E-flat, Hob. 49, Mozart's Sonata in G Major, K. 283, and the Sonata in F minor, Op. 2/1, and Seven Bagatelles, Op. 33, of Beethoven. The performance is at 8 p.m. at Chandler Recital Hall, the perfect venue for this music. Admission free. For more information call 683-3020.
The Audubon Quartet, well known for its Feldman Chamber Music Society and Virginia Wesleyan College concerts, returns to Hampton Roads for an intriguing program Tuesday. The Jewish Community Center of Tidewater will host ``An Evening of Jewish Music,'' featuring works composed by Czech musicians interned at the Terezin concentration camp.
Terezin, or Theresienstadt, was an artistic community supported by the Nazis as a public-relations gesture. Many promising artists were sent there, some producing deeply moving works. The Audubon concert should have special poignancy: In researching music for this program, Audubon violist Doris Lederer discovered that her father was a Terezin survivor.
The performance is at 8 p.m. at the JCC, 7300 Newport Ave. in Norfolk. Tickets are $5, and reservations are required. For more information, call 489-1371.
German music did not begin with J.S. Bach. Saturday at Old Dominion University, the excellent early-music ensemble Capriole performs cantatas by Bach's precursors. Soprano Suzanne Peck and countertenor Stephen Rickards will be joined by the ODU Madrigal Singers in cantatas by Heinrich Schuetz, Dietrich Buxtehude, Johann Schmelzer, Johann Michael Bach and Johann Christoph Bach. Tickets are $12, $4 for students. For more information, call 683-3020.
Apollo
The local exploration of Holocaust music began Monday with a concert by Apollo, a chamber ensemble of select Virginia Symphony members. A string quartet featuring guest cellist Christopher Costanza was vivid in Ervin Schulhoff's First Quartet. And pianist Charles Woodward offered a sensitive and lively interpretation of the first movement of Terezin composer Viktor Ullmann's Sonata No. 7. Woodward, like pianist Christopher Kypros, is an underappreciated local resource.
But ``Silenced Voices: Music of the Holocaust'' wasn't performed exactly as billed. Though the concert began at 8 p.m., two non-Holocaust-related pieces and a lecture pushed the Holocaust music back until 9:55.
Harpist Barbara Chapman and flutist Debra Wendells Cross are first-rate players, yet Sergui Natra's ``A Book of Hebrew Songs for Harp'' and Ernest Bloch's well-crafted ``Suite Modale'' didn't seem germane to the topic. And even Cross' musicality could not keep a flute transcription of a song for baritone from sounding curious.
Today
Today at 2 p.m. at the Virginia Beach Center for the Arts, the Chesapeake-based Hardwick Chamber Ensemble salutes African-American composer William Grant Still on the centenary of his birth. Still (1895-1978) remains the best-known of all black composers, save Duke Ellington. His daughter, Judith Anne Still, will give a lecture and slide presentation. The ensemble will perform works for various combinations of violin, clarinet, trombone and piano.
Today's concert is free. The program will be repeated Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. at Norfolk State University's Wise Art Gallery; Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Chesapeake Central Library; and Friday at 6 p.m. at Barnes and Noble Book Store, Columbus Center, Virginia Beach. For more information, call 424-4277.
Today at 7 p.m. at Christ & St. Lukes Church, Norfolk, organist Allen Shaffer will play a benefit recital for the Cantata Chorus, which he conducts. ``In the Footsteps of of Bach: A Musical and Visual Tour'' will feature Baroque violinist Annie Loud (a frequent Capriole collaborator) and WHRO-FM personality Dwight Davis. The lecture recital traces the path of J.S. Bach through Thuringia and Saxony, exploring the cities where he lived, performed and composed. The suggested donation is $10. For more information, call 627-5665. ILLUSTRATION: CORNELL UNIVERSITY PHOTOGRAPHY
Malcolm Bilson performs sonatas by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven at
Chandler Recital Hall at 8 p.m. Monday.
by CNB