The Derby City Chamber Music Festival, a high-end classical music camp named for a high-end horse race, opens a one week stand in Louisville this week, with top local and national performers taking a run through a bevy of best-loved chamber music works. The festival includes three public concerts – Friday, May 16; Sunday, May 18; and Tuesday May 20 – at Second Presbyterian Church.
Festival director and Louisville Orchestra principal cellist Nick Finch says the opportunity to gather gifted musicians and sprinkle them into fresh combinations of trios and quartets and the like adds a special sparkle to the event.
“It’s kind of like speed dating,” says Finch. “You have people who don't necessarily play together all the time suddenly playing in new configurations, with new musical partners. When that happens, there's another level of attention and awareness that often produces something truly special. It's something about the spontaneity of it all.”
Flashes of brilliance could come in the opening night concert Friday (7:30 p.m.), with renowned violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt performing with new partners in a Mozart quartet and a Dvorak sextet. Pajaro-van de Stadt was a founding violist with the Dover Quartet, a part of the Quartet in Residence at the Kennedy Center, and is now a member of the newly-formed piano quartet Espressivo! Friday night she will join artists from New York, Boston, Georgia, Nashville – and Louisville.
“What’s really great is not simply bringing national artists to our community, but those players having an exchange with some of the greatest artists we have right here,” says Finch, who founded the festival four years ago.
Also on Friday, Jon Gustely, the principal French horn of the Louisville Orchestra teams with American-Israeli violinist Giora Schmidt and Polish-American pianist Adam Golka in Johannes Brahms’ Horn Trio in E Flat. The Brahms trio is exactly the kind of music the Derby City chamber fest was made to shine a light upon. It’s a major work that isn’t often programmed – a rare chance for players to perform, and audiences to hear. “And it’s gorgeous,” says Gustely. “A really beautiful Brahms trio.”
In the Lydian Mode
The Derby City festival favors a traditional repertoire, and in that theme, Sunday’s concert (3:30 p.m.) features three works by Beethoven, and a large piece for chamber orchestra by Vaughan-Williams in which all 26 players in the festival will perform.
Finch is especially interested in the Beethoven piece which is adapted for large ensemble from the Third Movement of the composer’s String Quartet No. 15. Beethoven, himself, called the piece Heiliger Dankgesang, “A song of Thanksgiving to the Deity from a convalescent in the Lydian mode.”
“Beethoven had suffered a terrible illness, almost died, but then recovered,” says Finch. “This was his thanks to his Creator for his recovery – and it is just one of the most deeply powerful and spiritual things he ever wrote.”
An interesting facet of the title is the “Lydian mode,” in which the composer reaches back in time for medieval church music techniques. “He uses counterpoint and yet creates something that is very romantic and very avant garde at the same time,” explains Finch. “This arrangement for string orchestra was originally done by a group in Boston called A Far Cry, which I recorded with them. I think it’s the greatest thing Beethoven ever wrote – that many people don’t know.”
The concluding concert on Tuesday, May 20 (7:30 p.m.), features larger ensembles, including a Stravinsky piece with 15 players, a sextet by the 20th Century Hungarian composer Ernő Dohnányi, and the Mozart Clarinet Quintet. One of Mozart’s best pals in Vienna was clarinetist Anton Stadler, and Mozart kept him busy. The quintet features two violins, viola and cello, with Louisville Orchestra principal clarinet Andrea Levine taking the lead.
The festival, now in its fourth season, is sponsored by local music patrons, but there’s also an opportunity for fans to make a small contribution at the performances. The concerts are free with reserved seats available at derbycitychamberfest.org.