"Being Mendelssohn:" Coda

Aug 8, 11:15 PM

Music@Menlo’s seventh season closed on Saturday with a spectacular final episode of “Being Mendelssohn.” In the afternoon, the Chamber Music Institute students—some as young as ten years old—wowed listeners at the summer’s final Koret Young Performers Concert with precocious readings of works by Beethoven, Schubert, Debussy, Rachmaninov, and more. Their season-long mentors, the Institute’s International Program artists, capped an impressive residency with a riveting Prelude Performance: pianists Fan-Ya Lin and Hye-Yeon Park gave Mendelssohn’s Andante and Allegro Brillant for four-hand piano; the Atria Ensemble offered Max Bruch’s Opus 83 Pieces for clarinet trio; and the International Program string players joined forces for an enthralling account of the Mendelssohn Octet.

The festival saved the finest vintage for last, as pianist Menahem Pressler closed the festival season with “Promise Fulfilled,” a program of Franz Schubert and the Mendelssohn piano trios. The evening brought together the founding pianist of the legendary Beaux Arts Trio—a bedrock of the chamber music world for more than fifty years—and one half of the celebrated Emerson String Quartet: violinist Eugene Drucker and cellist and festival artistic director David Finckel. The jubilant closing chords of Mendelssohn’s Opus 66 Piano Trio filled Menlo Park Presbyterian Church and met with boisterous ovation.

Thanks to all artists and guests, Institute faculty, young musicians, interns, volunteers, and audiences who helped to make a magical summer of “Being Mendelssohn.” Stay tuned throughout the year for festival updates, including the upcoming release of the 2009 volume of Music@Menlo LIVE festival recordings, and please join us next summer for Music@Menlo 2010.