Coming up this Saturday evening, July 13, will be the first of Lenape Chamber Ensemble’s three Summer Gala Concerts at Delaware Valley University’s Life Sciences Building in Doylestown.
Concert-goers can hear chamber music at its best played by distinguished musicians well-known to Bucks County audiences on July 13, 20 and 27 at 8 p.m.
This Saturday’s program begins with Franz Josef Haydn’s “String Quartet opus 74 no. 3,” written in 1793 during the peak of his impressive musical output. It has been named “The Horseman” or “Rider” because of the jogging rhythm at the beginning of the piece.
Performing this Quartet will be Kobi Malkin, concertmaster of the American Ballet Theater, violinist Katie Hyun an ASTRAL artist and member of the Amphion String Quartet, violist Caeli Smith of the Orpheus and Verbier chamber orchestras and cellist Alberto Parrini, member of the American Symphony and frequent cellist with the New York Philharmonic.
The second selection, the “Quartet for Piano, Clarinet, Violin and Cello,” was composed in 1897 by Walter Rabl, a Viennese conductor and teacher who composed very few works and was known mainly as a conductor. Yet this Piano Quartet established his status as a composer by winning first prize at a chamber music competition whose chief judge was Johannes Brahms.
Joining Hyun and Parrini are clarinetist Alan R Kay from the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and Marcantonio Barone, prizewinning pianist and Steinway artist from Philadelphia.
Malkin, Parrini and Barone join for the program’s finale, Schubert’s “Piano Trio no. 1 in B-flat Major, Op.99.” It was composed in 1827 but Schubert never offered it to a publisher and it was not brought out until 1836, eight years after his death. The last movement is based on the song, Skolie: “Let us, in the bright May morning, take delight in the brief life of the flower, before the fragrance disappears.”
Tickets at $20 for adults, $15 for seniors and students, and $5 for children are available online, at the door or by calling 610-294-9361. Delaware Valley University’s Life Sciences Building is at 700 E. Butler Ave. These concerts are supported by a grant from the Bucks County Tourist Grants Program.
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