2011–2012 Winter Series

Music@Menlo Winter Series Music@Menlo’s Winter Series offers listeners the opportunity to experience the festival’s signature chamber music programming throughout the year, deepening the festival’s presence as one of the Bay Area’s leading cultural institutions. Following the stunning success of the inaugural Winter Series season, the 2011–2012 season will comprise three Sunday afternoon performances at the Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton, featuring a variety of repertoire performed by many of the festival’s favorite artists.

October 2, 2011
Inon Barnatan, piano

February 12, 2012
Alessio Bax, piano
Tara Helen O’Connor, flute
Stephen Taylor, oboe
David Shifrin, clarinet
Peter Kolkay, bassoon
William Purvis, horn

April 29, 2012
Jupiter String Quartet

Tickets for the 2011/2012 Winter Series are now on sale! Order early to ensure best availability and get great seats. Save $10 when you order the complete three-concert series. Order today»

Inon Barnatan: Darknesse Visible

October 2, 2011

4:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton
Tickets: $50/$45 adult; $25/$20 student
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Hailed by the New Yorker as “a player of uncommon sensitivity,” the virtuosic young pianist Inon Barnatan returns to Music@Menlo for a recital program that explores the palpable awareness of what lies beneath the music. “Darknesse Visible,” a seductive program of works for solo piano, includes a work by one of the most exciting composers of the twentieth century, Thomas Adès. The program also features a masterpiece of the solo piano repertoire, Schubert’s A Major Piano Sonata.

Claude Debussy (1862–1918)
Suite bergamasque (1905)

Thomas Adès (b. 1971)
Darknesse Visible (1992)

Maurice Ravel (1875–1937)
Gaspard de la nuit (1908)

Benjamin Britten (1913–1976)
Fantasy on Peter Grimes (1972) (arr. Stevenson)

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
Sonata in A Major, D. 959 (1828)

Artist
Inon Barnatan, piano

Winds of France

February 12, 2012

4:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton
Tickets: $50/$45 adult; $25/$20 student
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In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, France became the compositional epicenter of chamber music written for wind instruments. The timbrally colorful combination of the instruments proved irresistible for many of France’s most compelling musical voices. Join these virtuosic wind players from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center as they explore this ravishing, and rarely heard, repertoire.

Watch a video preview of the concert with behind-the-scenes rehearsal footage and artist interviews!

Maurice Emmanuel (1862–1938)
Sonata for Flute, Clarinet, and Piano, op. 11 (1907)

Yan Maresz (b. 1966)
Circumambulation for Flute (1993, rev. 1996)

Jean Françaix (1912–1997)
Wind Quintet (1948)

Jacques Ibert (1890–1962)
Trois pièces brèves for Wind Quintet (1930)

Francis Poulenc (1899–1963)
Sextet for Piano, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Bassoon, and Horn (1932–1939)

Artists Alessio Bax, piano; Tara Helen O’Connor, flute; Stephen Taylor, oboe; David Shifrin, clarinet; Peter Kolkay, bassoon; William Purvis, horn

Jupiter String Quartet

April 29, 2012

4:00 p.m., The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton
Tickets: $50/$45 adult; $25/$20 student
Buy Now »

The venerated English conductor Jeffrey Tate once said, “The most
perfect expression of human behavior is the string quartet.” The Jupiter
String Quartet, one of America’s most exciting young chamber
ensembles, returns to Music@Menlo for this special afternoon of
masterworks from the string quartet repertoire. In addition to Haydn’s
delightful F Major String Quartet, op. 77, no. 2, and Prokofiev’s Second String Quartet, the program features the colossal and expressive String Quartet in G Major, D. 887, by Franz Schubert—the final quartet that he wrote.

Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
String Quartet in F Major, op. 77, no. 2

Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953)
String Quartet no. 2 in F Major, op. 92 (1941)

Franz Schubert (1797–1828)
String Quartet in G Major, D. 887 (1826)

Artists
Jupiter String Quartet: Nelson Lee, Megan Freivogel, violins; Liz Freivogel, viola; Daniel McDonough, cello