SALON SELECTIONS
We are launching a new initiative to keep the music flowing called Salon Selections, where Kathryn Mishell will select a movement from one of our 120 concerts over our thirty year history. We look forward to listening down memory lane!
Salon Selection #21
It is always a joy when we welcome the Miró Quartet to Salon Concerts. One of the preeminent string quartets in the international chamber music scene, we are honored to have them play for us in the intimate environment of a Salon Concert. This selection from their March 2015 concert features the second and third movements from Beethoven’s String Quartet in f minor, Op. 95, the “Serioso.” After a dense and concentrated first movement, the second movement is the tender heart of the quartet. The third movement, marked “serioso” is intense and stormy.
Picture yourself in a beautiful living room, glass in hand, with a few fellow music lovers, and the Miró playing just for you.
Salon Selection #20
Continuing my tradition of wanting to give all the musicians on each of our concerts something to play together, I composed a Piano Quartet for our January 2011 concert. The stellar musicians on that concert playing a variety of repertoire, but no other piece which featured them all together, were Stephanie Sant’Ambrogio, violin, Bruce Williams, viola, and Douglas Harvey, cello, with myself, Kathryn, on piano. It is a one-movement work in my favorite personal style, which I’ll call modern romanticism. It came straight from the heart, this one. I tried to bar self-doubt from the room and just write. I loved the process and hope you will enjoy the result. This piece won the International Glickman Prize for Chamber Music by women composers in 2011.
Salon Selection #19
Jaunty is the word that comes to mind in describing the first movement of André Previn’s Trio for Oboe, Bassoon and Piano. He designated the movement “Lively.” Those certainly are the qualities given to this superb performance by Rebecca Henderson, oboe, Kristin Wolfe Jensen, bassoon, and Colette Valentine, piano. They performed it on our January 2012 concert.
Salon Selection #18
You’ll want to grab the opportunity to hear this week’s Salon Selection while it lasts. Marianne Gedigian and Rick Rowley’s performance of Lowell Liebermann’s Flute Sonata Op. 23 will knock your socks off with its Presto energico finale after rocking you like a baby in the first movement. This stellar performance from our March 2018 concert will only be posted for one week, until September 1st, so enjoy it while you can!
Salon Selection #17
This week’s Salon Selection is the delightful Concertpiece No. 2 for clarinet, bassoon, and piano by Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn was good friends with the skilled German clarinetist Heinrich Joseph Baermann and his son Carl Baermann, a fine clarinetist in his own right. It was a friendship built not only from shared musical interests and compatible personalities but also from the Baermanns’ masterful skill as dumpling chefs - Mendelssohn could never resist a well-made dumpling! Around Christmas 1832, the Baermanns were in Berlin (then Mendelssohn's home) for a series of performances, and Mendelssohn invited them over for an evening of dumplings. The Baermanns insisted on remuneration in the form of a piece of music for father and son to play together; thus Mendelssohn's Concert Piece no. 1 op. 113. The exchange - dumplings and strudel for music - was so successful and made both parties so happy that it was repeated a little while later: thus, more dumplings for Felix and the Concert Piece no. 2 in D minor for clarinet, basset horn, and piano, op. 114 (January 1833), for the Baermanns! This delightful piece, which we'll present for Clarinet, Bassoon and Piano begins with a joyful romp, continues with a beautifully melodic and gentle middle movement, and ends with a happy tune that will make you want to get up and dance.
Our artists at this January 2012 performance were Nathan Williams, clarinet, Kristin Wolfe Jensen, bassoon, and Colette Valentine, piano.
Salon Selection #16
A continuation from last weeks #15, this Salon Selection is the second movement of Piano Trio No.1 by Alexander Gretchaninov. If you have not heard of this composer, you will be thrilled to get to know his romantic, melodic, passionate music. Read below in Selection #15 to learn more about Gretchaninov.
Salon Selection #15
This week’s Salon Selection is the first movement of Piano Trio No.1 by Alexander Gretchaninov, whose 150th birthday we were marking on this 2014 concert. If you have not heard of this composer, you will be thrilled to get to know his romantic, melodic, passionate music. Alexander Gretchaninov (1864-1956) was born in Moscow and studied at the Moscow Conservatory with Anton Arensky and Sergie Taneyev. In the late 1880s, after a quarrel with Arensky, he moved to St. Petersburg where he studied composition and orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov until 1893. He composed 201 opus numbers in all. His works, especially those for voice, achieved considerable success within Russia. By 1910, he was considered a composer of such distinction that the Tsar had awarded him an annual pension. Though he remained in Russia for several years after the Revolution, ultimately, he chose to emigrate, first to France in 1925 and then to the U.S. in 1939 where he remained for the rest of his life.
We loved learning and performing this trio, and I am thrilled to have this occasion to present it to you as a Salon Selection. Annie Chalex Boyle is the violinist, Douglas Harvey the cellist, and Kathryn Mishell the pianist.
Salon Selection #14
This week’s selection Is the third movement of Mozart’s Piano Quartet in E-Flat Major, K 493. When he wrote his piano quartets, Mozart was at the zenith of his fame as a performing concert pianist as well as a confirmed master of chamber music. This piano quartet’s beautiful string writing combines and contrasts with the sparkling piano phrases like clouds and starlight.
The fabulous Nancy Garrett is playing with the award-winning Aeolus Quartet in this Salon Concerts performance of May 29, 2016.
Salon Selection #13
This week’s selection is a video of Kathryn’s Have a Good Day! A very short (7 minute) two-character opera performed by one Baritone, with Flute and Piano. The singer takes the part of two characters—a shopkeeper and a customer. The performers are Lawrence Harris, baritone, Karl Kraber, flute, and Kathryn Mishell, piano. This is a video of the premier performance on January 25, 2015. It has since been performed in New York City and in Austin venues and was nominated for Best Original Composition/Score at the 2016-17 Austin Critics Table Awards.
Salon Selection #12
American composer Howard Hanson composed his exciting and moving Concerto da Camera for piano and string quartet the spring before he received his first teaching position. A few years later, in 1921, Hanson was the first winner of the Prix de Rome in Music. He enjoyed a long career as composer, conductor, educator, and for forty years Director of the Eastman School of Music. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1944 for his Symphony No. 4.
This wonderful piece has never been published. We presented it at Salon Concerts in a Texas Premier. The last time Hanson himself made note of a performance was at the home of George Eastman. We brought it to you in an elegant Austin home, following in the tradition that is our mission to continue.
Salon Selection #11
Anton Nel and Douglas Harvey are playing for you on this week’s selection. The piece is Seven Variations on a theme from Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” for Cello and Piano. The performance took place on October 19, 2009.
Salon Selection #10
This week’s selection was recorded at our November 25th concert in 2013. It is the thrilling final movement of the Amy Beach Piano Quintet in F-sharp Minor, Op. 67. The performers are Joseph Choi, piano and the Aeolus String Quartet: Nicholas Tavani and Rachel Shapiro, violins, Gregory Luce, viola, and Alan Richardson, cello.
Included is my spoken introduction about Amy Beach and this quintet taken from my radio program about women composers, Into The Light.
Salon Selection #9
Recorded at the November 22, 2009 Salon Concert, this week’s selection is Francis Poulenc’s L’Histoire de Babar le petit éléphant, texte de Jean de Brunhoff. Robert Rudié narrates both in French and in English, with Kathryn at the piano. It is a special delight to present this to you after all these years. Poulenc’s music is so endearingly expressive of Brunhoff's wonderful text. Robert and I performed it for many audiences in the U.S. over the years, and always loved the experience.
Salon Selection #8
This week’s selection is the third movement—Moderato-- of the Ernst von Dohnányi Quintet in E-flat minor for Piano and Strings, Op.26 from our January 2009 concert.
This Hungarian composer of lush Romantic works wrote this piece in 1914. The third movement, opening with a somber canon has been described by one critic as being “saturated with a mood of regret and resignation. The second theme presented by the piano, although solemn, is not pessimistic.”
Not pessimistic is what we need for this time. I would say that this music expresses and brings us to the goodness and beauty that exist even through the struggle we are in.
The players are Joseph Smith, Elise Winters, violin; Jessica Mathaes, viola, Douglas Harvey, cello, and Kathryn Mishell, piano.
Salon Selection #7
This week’s selection was recorded at our last live concert of this season, on March 9, 2020. It was the culmination of our season-long celebration of Beethoven’s 250th birthday—his Septet in E-flat, Op.20.
During the second half of the 18th century, serenades and divertimentos represented the favorite pop music of the aristocracy and middle class. Even the young Beethoven had a go at the genre as the century came to a close. Composed in 1799, before he had any inkling of his impending deafness, the Septet in E-flat summed up this frothiest of entertainments. Much to Beethoven’s chagrin, the relentless popularity of this divertimento tended to eclipse some of his greater achievements. He ranted and railed when the work continued to overshadow his truly great masterpieces until his dying day. But it was popular for a reason: It’s great fun to listen to, and it remains, arguably, the finest septet ever written.
Here for your listening pleasure are Movements II, Adagio cantabile and V, Scherzo—Allegro molto e vivace.
Performers are Patrick Hughes, horn; Kristin Wolfe Jensen, basson; Stephen Girko, clarinet; Haeni Lee, violin, Bruce Williams, viola; and Douglas Harvey, cello; Jessica Valls, bass
Salon Selection #6
This selection was played at our January 2009 concert. It is a very beautiful performance of the slow movement of Haydn's Op 64 No 5 String Quartet, “The Lark.”
Salon Selection #5
Recorded live March 25, 2013 at Salon Concerts, this is the second moment of Contrasts by Béla Bartók, a trio for clarinet, violin and piano. Composed in 1938, it was dedicated to Benny Goodman and Joseph Szigeti. The performers here are Nathan Williams, clarinetist, Elisabeth Kufferath, violinist, and Stephen Perry, pianist. These outstanding musicians capture the mysterious atmosphere of this movement superbly.
Salon Selection #4
Recorded live from Salon Concerts’ free Rush Hour Concert on November 25th, 2008, here is the third movement of a piece entitled Reunion by Kathryn Mishell. Here is the story of the piece’s creation:
Paris 1863: Napoleon III commissions renowned luthier house Gand Frères (Grand Brothers) - known for fine instruments with a distinctive red varnish - to make a set of stringed instruments, perhaps to be shown at the Paris exhibition that year. Cut from the same piece of wood, the instruments carry the same serial number.
Austin 2008: violinist Brian Lewis and cellist Douglas Harvey, both based in Austin, realize they both own Gand instruments with that very serial number. Marveling that the instruments have made their way across many continents and years to land in Texas, they imagine the violin and cello longing to play together once more, as surely they did in 1863.
Invited to perform with Doug at the November 2008 Salon Concerts, Brain asked composer and Salon Concerts artistic director Kathryn Mishell to write a piece to finally bring these two special instruments together again. Titled Reunion, the piece received its world premier at the November 23 and 24 Salon Concerts.
The first movement, entitled Youth, begins with the sounds of child-like explorations of the open strings, then transforms into music of innocence and playfulness. In the second movement, Separation, the violin and cello each develop their individual personalities and explore the world separately. The last movement, Reunion, brings the two together, first tentatively, then joyfully finding each other again.
Salon Selection #3
Recorded live from Salon Concert’s February 4th, 2019 concert, our Salon Selection #3 Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante for violin, viola and orchestra, in a chamber arrangement by Kathryn Mishell. Sean Riley played his uniquely beautiful-sounding 2018 3-D printed six-string plastic violin from Austin (!), along with Austin Symphony Orchestra principal violist Bruce Williams playing his 1680 Brothers Grancino viola from Milan.
Salon Selection #2
This second Salon Selection was from our free Rush-Hour concert of November 2008, where the public is invited to experience a short version of our regular house concerts.
Salon Selection #1
From our April 30, 2018 concert, this recording features the very artists who are scheduled to play on the postponed April concert this year.