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The Collection of Musical Instruments announces its 2018-2019 concert series

Last year, the Collection celebrated the historic fiftieth anniversary of its annual concert series in grand style featuring staff favorite Paolo Pandolfo, and ending with an all-Schubert program in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution.  For the fifty-first season, the collection will continue to offer a distinguished slate of historical-context performances.

The critically acclaimed harpsichordist Władysław Kłosiewicz will open the Collection’s concert series on October 7 with a tribute to Wanda Landowska (1879-1959), a Polish harpsichordist whose performances, recordings, teachings, and writings greatly in uenced the revival of the instrument in the early twentieth century. Born in Warsaw in 1955, Kłosiewicz became enamored with the harpsichord in his youth. During his teens and twenties, he studied at the Warsaw Academy of Music under the tutelage of Julitty Sleńdzińskiej, and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, in Siena, Italy, under Ruggero Gerlin, who had been a close associate of Landowska. In 1978, Kłosiewicz was invited to perform with the Polish Chamber Orchestra under Jerzy Maksymiuk, an opportunity that launched his career. For the past forty years, he has participated in the establishment and artistic direction of such period ensembles as the Concerto Avenna and Musica Antiquae Collegium Varsoviense and has been instrumental in producing the collected stage works of Claudio Monteverdi with the Warsaw Chamber Opera. As both a soloist and a chamber musician, Kłosiewicz has won numerous prizes in the categories of musical interpretation, basso continuo realization, and the performance of contemporary music. In 1984, he was awarded first prize in harpsichord at the prestigious ARD International Music Competition in Munich, when no second or third prize was awarded. Kłosiewicz’s many recordings include the complete harpsichord works of François Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, and Johann Jakob Froberger, the partitas of J.S. Bach, and the sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. His recording of Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations for the Pro Academia Narolense Foundation received the Fryderyk prize (Poland’s highest music award) in 2000.

Kłosiewicz’s program at the collection, “Landowska in Memoriam,” will include works by J. J. Froberger, L. Couperin, F. Couperin, and J.S. Bach. Sponsorship is provided in part by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.

 

On November 4, the Collection will welcome the Dark Horse Consort for the ensemble’s rst visit to Yale. Inspired by the bronze horse statues in Venice’s famed St. Mark’s Basilica, the ensemble attempts to recreate the glorious sounds of such composers as Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Monteverdi, and Heinrich Schütz. Hailed as “stellar” by The New York Timesand “splendid” by The Boston Globe, the early music ensemble is dedicated to unearthing the majestic late Renaissance and early Baroque repertoire for brass instruments. The program, “The Golden Age of Brass: Seventeenth Century Music of Germany, England, and Italy,” will include works by Speer, Scheidt, Locke, Byrd, Adson, Hammerschmidt, Vierdanck, de Wert, Gabrieli, and Merulo. Members of the Dark Horse Consort appearing on this program will include cornettists Kiri Tollaksen and Alexandra Opsahl, and sackbutists Greg Ingles, Erik Schmalz, and Mack Ramsey.

 

The Boreas Quartett Bremen makes its debut appearance at the Collection on February 3, 2019, when recorder players Jin-Ju Baek, Elisabeth Champollion, Julia Fritz, and Luise Manske will be joined by their mentor Han Tol in a performance of music from the sixteenth century to the present.

The group formed at the Hochschule für Künste, in Bremen, Germany, where they studied with Tol, the internationally renowned Dutch recorder virtuoso, teacher, and conductor. The ensemble takes its name from Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind. Since their student days, the quartet has maintained an active performance schedule beyond Germany, playing in South Korea, Taiwan, the Czech Republic, Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Together, the quartet’s members have acquired more than forty recorders of different sizes and design, including a twelve-piece Renaissance consort by Peter van der Poel of Utrecht. Other recorders in their collection were made by Ralf Ehlert, Francesco Li Virghi, and Luca de Paolis. In 2015, the ensemble released a CD on the German music label classic production osnabrück (cpo) featuring Han Tol in a recording of the twenty-one In Nomines by Christopher Tye (c. 1505-before 1573). The Boreas Quartett Bremen is supported by the “Laudate, Cantate” foundation and the Heinz-Peter and Annelotte Koch Foundation, both located in Bremen.

 

The Collection will present Steven Isserlis and Robert Levin in a program of works for cello and fortepiano by Beethoven on February 24. Lauded for his probing musicianship and instrumental virtuosity, British cellist Steven Isserlis enjoys a uniquely varied career as a soloist, chamber musician, author, educator, and broadcaster. He has a strong interest in historical performance, working with many period-instrument ensembles and giving recitals with harpsichord and fortepiano. Pianist Robert Levin is heard throughout the United States and abroad in recital, as a soloist and in chamber music concerts. Equally at home on modern piano, fortepiano, and harpsichord, he is also an authoritative scholar of the Baroque and Classical periods, and of Mozart in particular.

Isserlis and Levin are frequent duo partners. The New York Times praised one of their Beethoven recitals, offering, “Not surprising given their experience together and their continuing partnership, Mr. Isserlis and Mr. Levin proved kindred spirits, each matching the other’s phrases in temperament and dynamics, right down to the quietest turn of phrase. But what was most impressive — and Beethovenian — was the power of their climaxes, especially in the A major.”

 

After five years, the celebrated ensemble Quicksilver Baroque will return to the Collection on March 31 to present a program titled “Violini a Due: An Italian Journey.” On this dazzling musical trip, Quicksilver will take collection audience members to the cradle of the virtuoso violin through its rich development, from Castello to Corelli. Of the group’s most recent recording, Fantasticus: Extravagant and Virtuosic Music from 17th Century Germany, Gramophone wrote, “Quicksilver signi es something unpredictable and swiftly responsive. It’s the perfect name for an ensemble that demands exceptional instrumental skills ... Many of the works contain surprises around every corner, as the composers let their imaginations soar through curious shifts of meter, harmony and form that jolt and delight the ears in equal measure. But extravagance and virtuosity are also employed to more subtle effect with the players spinning long lines coloured by delicately applied ornaments, and altering dynamics and phrasing to highlight the music’s expressive beauty ... Fantasticus, indeed!”