daily festival recaps
- Music@Menlo Wraps Up Spectacular Sixth Season (August 08)
- Voices of Our Time (August 07)
- "without whom we would be mute" (August 06)
- Just Another Day at Music@Menlo (August 05)
- Private Music Made Public (August 04)
- Modernist Marathon (August 03)
- The Musical Imagination (August 03)
- Delicious Dissonance (August 01)
- What Ithaka Means (August 01)
- Romantic Cadence (July 30)
- Brahms the Progressive (July 30)
- "Vissi d'arte..." (July 29)
- "...and all the world is fresh and bright again." (July 27)
- Festive Day, Romantic Evening (July 27)
- Open House (July 25)
- "Origins of Modern String Playing" and Today's Rising Stars (July 25)
- Classical Bookends (July 23)
- Lesser Gives More (July 22)
- Fame is the Spur (July 22)
- Yes! (and Bird! and Bach!) (July 20)
- Baroque Heroics (July 19)
- Towards Bach (July 18)
- A Grand Beginning (July 17)
Private Music Made Public
Posted: August 04
Festival audiences on Monday received generous helpings of the thoughtfully wrought chamber music of Dmitri Shostakovich—what the composer called his “private music.” At the afternoon master class, cellist Andrés Díaz lent his insight to the International Program artists’ interpretation of Shostakovich’s Opus 57 Piano Quintet. The quintet capped the evening’s Prelude Performance, which also featured Shostakovich’s Opus 40 Cello Sonata and Leos Janacek’s “Kreutzer Sonata” Quartet. For the evening’s main course, Music@Menlo served up the season’s final performance of “The Rise of Modernism,” bringing together masterworks by the most innovative voices of the first half of the twentieth century: in addition to Shostakovich’s rambunctious Two Pieces for String Octet, music by Debussy, Stravinsky, Ives, and others. Before the second half performance of Prokofiev’s irresistible Overture on Hebrew Themes, clarinetist Anthony McGill spontaneously offered a very special musical tribute (to the surprise of even his colleagues onstage): the poignant “Spring Suite” for solo clarinet by Edwin Finckel, the composer father of festival Artistic Director David Finckel. “My father didn’t live long enough to see Music@Menlo,” David said, “but tonight he made it here.”
Festival favorite Ara Guzelimian makes his much-anticipated return to Music@Menlo on Wednesday night to lead the summer’s final Encounter, “Future Forward: Exploring the Here and Now” (7:30 p.m., Martin Family Hall). The event will feature special guest appearances by visiting composers Gabriela Lena Frank, Jennifer Higdon, and Kenneth Frazelle, whose music will be performed by the International Program artists at Thursday and Friday evenings’ Prelude Performances. Their music will also be spotlighted on Music@Menlo’s final concert program of the 2008 season, “Music Now: Voices of Our Time;” the program includes the world premiere of Kenneth Frazelle’s Piano Trio, commissioned by Music@Menlo. There is a limited number of tickets still available—don’t miss out on this historic musical event!