Sebago Long Lake Music Festival artists from left include Todd Phillips, Emilie-Anne Gendron, Mihae Lee, Mihai Marica and Matthew Sinno on Aug. 8, 2023. Photo by Mark Silber

Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival will hold the fifth and final concert of its 52nd season at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 13, at 7:30 p.m. at Deertrees Theatre in Harrison. Featured composers are Alberto Ginastera, Ludwig van Beethoven and Antonin Dvorak.

The program includes:
GINASTERA: Impresiones de la Puna for Flute and String Quartet
BEETHOVEN: String Trio in G Major, Op. 9, No. 1
DVOŘÁK: Piano Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 87

Musicians include Laura Gilbert, flute; Emilie-Anne Gendron, violin; Todd Phillips, violin; Matthew Sinno, viola; Mihai Marica, cello; and Mihae Lee, piano.

The Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera’s musical journey took him from the folk music of Argentina’s mountains and plains to the innovations of the 20tth-century avant garde. He was inspired by his country’s folk traditions and was devoted to capturing Argentina’s folk heritage in his music. Increasingly in his compositions he combined folk elements with modernist techniques. But over the year, he returned to his early passion — the primitive America of the Mayas, Aztecs and the Incas. Impresiones de la Puna was first published when Ginastera was 18. He draws on the melodies, songs, and dances of the ancient Indian world to evoke the spirit of the Puna, the cold, treeless high Andes plateau that was the heart of the Inca empire.  The traditional flute, the quena, takes center stage. The playful flute, pizzicato strings, and offbeat rhythms, “Danza” adds a festive spirit to these vivid impressions of the Puna world.

Beethoven string trios followed his earlier piano trios. The three Opus 9 trios were his first and the only in the four-movement sonata format. His first, played in the August 13th program, is a delight from beginning to end, a witty and buoyant work distinguished by elegant interplay by three of the Festival’s newer musicians. Gendron on violin has performed with SLLMF since 2023, Sinno on viola since 2019 and Marica on cello since 2016.

Dvorák was a Romantic composer who grounded his work within the Classical tradition while introducing innovation and originality into the Classical form. Dvorák filled his compositions with the melodic sounds and the rhythms of Czech nationalism. In his Piano Quartet, featured in this program, he’d not written a piano quartet in 14 years. But it came easily to him when he started. “It’s going unexpectedly easily and the melodies are coming to me in droves.” In addition to its wonderful surge of melodies, the work he so easily produced is structurally masterful, harmonically exotic, and brimming with high spirits.

All those 21 and under are admitted free of charge at all SLLMF concerts at Deertrees Theatre. Monday Open Rehearsals from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. at Deertrees continue throughout the festival season and are free and open to the public. Gideon Michael Richard, studying music at USM, will perform violin and piano before this concert from 6:30-7:15 p.m. on the lawn as part of the 2024 Youth Program.

For more information about the Festival and to order tickets, go to sebagomusicfestival.org/concert-tickets-2024. Tickets can also be purchased the evening of the concert at the box office.