The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Season winds down with Cassatt String Quartet
FALLS VILLAGE — Music Mountain winds down its 93rd summer chamber music festival season with concerts that bring women composers — and performers — to the foreground.
This has been a very special year for Music Mountain, called “the summer shrine of the string quartet” by the New Yorker, with the return of live, in-person concerts in historic Gordon Hall following last year’s COVID-interrupted season. (It had its moments, however: a series of live virtual interviews with artists along with excerpted performances, some livestreamed, made up our successful weekly “Live From Music Mountain” series in 2020.)
“With the eagerly anticipated return of live performance to Music Mountain, we also wanted to take the opportunity to diversify our programming and give ‘air time’ to the many, too-often neglected, women composers of the genre,” said Oskar Espina-Ruiz, Music Mountain’s artistic and executive director.
Crowning this initiative is the final concert of the season Sept. 5, featuring the all-female Cassatt String Quartet and celebrated pianist Ursula Oppens. Opening the program, Oppens will play selections from Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel’s intimate cycle of piano
pieces, Das Jahr (“The Year”).
“Mendelssohn Hensel was very much as talented and prolific as her more famous brother, Felix Mendelssohn,” Espina-Ruiz said. “She was her brother’s trusted advisor and critiqued his compositions before they were published. It is sad that the social mores of 19th-century Europe prevented her from a career in music like her brother’s, but nevertheless,
she persisted,” pouring out more than 500 compositions, including chamber works, songs, and piano pieces, often played at family salons for a select audience in the Mendelssohns’ home.
The tone poem-like selections of Das Jahr, each depicting a month and associated scene (such as “September: At the River,” or “June: Seranade”) are richly melodic and inventive,
remarkably free and flowing in their execution.
Following Mozart’s String Quartet in B Flat Minor (K. 589), one of his late “Prussian” quartets, the Cassatt Quartet and Oppens will conclude the program with Amy Beach’s Piano Quintet in F Sharp Minor, Opus 67.
New Hampshire-born composer Amy Beach (1867-1944) is generally considered America’s first great woman “classical” composer. The quintet, composed in 1905, is steeped in late-Romantic expressiveness – strongly influenced by Brahms – while displaying remarkable harmonic and tonal originality.
“Beach composed throughout her life and never had to labor in the shadows quite as much as Mendelssohn Hensel,” Espina-Ruiz explained. “Still, her work was unjustly neglected until recent decades. She had a powerful influence on composers and piano pedagogy in New England and beyond.” (Like Mendelssohn Hensel, Beach was a piano prodigy.)
Music Mountain is located at 225 Music Mountain Road, in Falls Village, where a short scenic drive will bring you to Gordon Hall atop Music Mountain. Free parking and picnic facilities are available.
Regularly scheduled Chamber Music Concerts are $45. Specially Priced Concerts are as follows: tickets for the Season Opening Concert on July 4 are $75, and Special Concerts on July 11 and Aug. 29 are $60. No fees will be charged. Children ages 5-18 are admitted free to all concerts when accompanied by a ticket holder. Other discounts apply.
Call 860-824-7126 for details. Sunday afternoon Chamber Music concerts start at 3 p.m. and last approximately 2 hours, with a 20-minute intermission. For more information, visit www.musicmountain.org.