Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival Presents Second Virtual Mini-Festival, March 4 - 7

While the full-scale return of live classical music concerts may be months off, local enthusiasts may continue to enjoy the new virtual performances commissioned by the Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, featuring international artists.

The second of three Mini-Festivals will take place March 4 - 7, with a single major classical work released at 10:00am each day. The four video recordings will be shared free of charge on the Festival website, cvillechambermusic.org, and will be available through the middle of May.

Artistic Directors Timothy Summers and Raphael Bell both feature prominently in the upcoming Mini-Festival.

From Berlin, violinist Summers performs the solo Passacaglia from the Mystery Sonatas of 17th-century baroque composer Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber. This work, based on a single falling line, evokes the Feast of the Guardian Angel and is one of the earliest works written for unaccompanied violin. Dating from the 1670’s, it is probably the greatest work for unaccompanied violin prior to J.S. Bach.

Also in Berlin, pianist Benjamin Hochman joins Summers for Six Melodies by John Cage, an exercise in calm and simplicity.

In Belgium, Bell will be joined by acclaimed pianist Boris Giltburg for Rachmaninoff’s lush Sonata in G minor for Cello and Piano, Op. 19. This work was first performed in Moscow in 1901 by Rachmaninoff at the piano and by cellist Anatoliy Brandukov, who was best man at Rachmaninoff’s wedding.

Closer to home, a dynamic trio of Festival alums – Johnny Gandelsman (violin), Melissa Reardon (viola), and Raman Ramakrishnan (cello) – perform the epic Divertimento for String Trio, K. 563 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on the campus of Bard College in New York. The Divertimento, dating from an extraordinarily rich period in Mozart’s compositional life, is one of his finest chamber works. It can be taken either in its grand whole, or in parts; its braided variation movement is a remarkable work on its own.

A unique feature of the Festival is the smartly arranged Bento Box of program notes, musical insights, discussions, and artist biographies that accompanies each video performance on the Festival’s website. Summers has also developed a visual tool which decodes the audio of the performances for harmonic content. This color-based analysis “helps the audience to listen closer and look further,” he says. “I hope that they not only give insights into the pieces they’re built around, but expand the sense of listening for harmony, which can be very rewarding.”

Look for a third Mini-Festival in May, with artists and repertoire to be announced soon. Performances from the upcoming Mini-Festivals will join works of Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Schubert, and Charlottesville composer Brian Simalchik already in the Listening Room, a new permanent feature on the Festival’s website, cvillechambermusic.org.