Green Music Festival artistic director Jeffrey Kahane has invited the world-renowned Borromeo Quartet, passionate young cellist Alisa Weilerstein, the innovative horn master Richard Todd and the San Francisco Symphony?s principal violist, Geraldine Walther, to take the stage with him for the inaugural Chamber Music Series of the Green Music Festival at Sonoma State University on July 20-21.
The two chamber music concerts, called "Jeffrey Kahane and Friends, I and II" will be held in the Evert B. Person Theatre at 8 p.m. on Saturday, July 20 and at 4 p.m. on Sunday, July 21. Works by Brahms, Ravel, Haydn, Schubert and Shostakovich will be featured.
On Saturday, the Borromeo Quartet will perform Schubert's Quartetsatz in C Minor. Mr. Kahane will then join them for Shostakovich's Piano Quintet. The program will conclude with the Brahms Horn Trio in E Flat with Richard Todd, horn, Margaret Batjer, violin and Kahane at the piano.
Quickly establishing itself as one of the most important string quartets performing today, the Borromeo Quartet has been hailed by The New York Times as "outstanding" and the Boston Globe as "simply the best there is." Richard Todd has earned acclaim as one of the premier hornists of his generation. The principal hornist with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Todd's style-hopping fluency and superb technique are redefining the way people think of the French horn. Margaret Batjer is widely respected nationally and internationally as a chamber musician and is concertmaster of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
On Sunday at the 4 p.m. concert, the Borromeo Quartet tackles Haydn's Op 76. No 2 Quartet. Alisa Weilerstein on cello joins Mr. Kahane and Ms. Batjer in Ravel's exquisite and dazzling Piano Trio in A Minor.
Weilerstein, at 20, has been performing publicly since she was 13 and has been compared to Jacqueline DuPre in her range of impassioned musicianship and natural virtuosity. She made a spectacular return appearance with the Santa Rosa Symphony last season. Geraldine Walther, the principal violist for the San Francisco Symphony and often called "the Bay Area's favorite violist" joins Weilerstein and the Borromeo Quartet for Brahms? glorious and joyous Sextet in G Major for the closing work.
Tickets are $15-$22 for each of the programs in the Chamber Music Series. For information, call (707) 546-8742 or visit the web site at www.greenmusicfestival.org.
