FARMINGTON — On Friday, Oct, 26, Maine Mountain Chamber Music will perform in Nordica Auditorium at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Featured will be MMCM co-directors pianist Yuri Funahashi and violist Laurie Kennedy, with guest artists Jennifer Elowitch, violin, and Elizabeth Anderson, cello.

The program includes Three Fantazias for Strings by Henry Purcell and the Phantasy Piano Quartet by Frank Bridge. Purcell was “Composer to the King’s violins” before being appointed organist at Westminster Abbey in 1679. In 1680, he composed, solely for his own enjoyment, a set of Fantazias, written for varying combinations of viols, in which sudden tempo changes form the contrasts.

Bridge’s Phantasy Piano Quartet is a work in the late Romantic style, with a passionate slow section, followed by an impish scherzo and, in the end, a return to the introductory material.

Also on the program is a new work, “Graces, Furies,” by Michael Alec Rose,  commissioned in 2007 by the Carolina Trio. Written for a young woman who at the time was battling a serious illness, this one-movement, post-Romantic work alternates between graceful lyricism of the “graces” and the opposing turmoil and anger of “furies.”

The program will conclude with Anton Dvorak’s Piano Trio in E minor, nicknamed the “Dumky” trio. Dvorak chose the trio, the work in which he most poignantly expressed his love for his motherland and its musical culture, as the centerpiece for his 1872 “farewell” 40-concert tour of Bohemia and Moravia. Dvorak used the term dumka for the blending of contrasting melancholy and joyful elements within one piece.

Anderson has studied with Jacqueline Du Pre, Yo-Yo Ma and Leonard Rose, and performs with the New York City Opera. Elowitch often performs with the Boston Symphony and is artistic co-director of the Portland Chamber Music Festival. Kennedy is principal violist and frequent concerto soloist with the Portland Symphony. Funahashi is a member of the New York Festival Chamber Music Society and performs regularly at Weill Carnegie Hall in New York City.

The concert, put on by the Arts Institute of Western Maine, will be at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $12, free for children under 16. For more information, call 645-2157.

Copy the Story Link