Spring Chamber Series Adds Third Concert
Since its founding 32 seasons ago, the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival has continually found ways to expand and vary its summertime programs, including different venues, themes, and formats. Last year, Long Island’s longest-running classical music series added BCMF Spring, with two concerts. The new venture had such a strong audience response that a third concert is on tap for 2016.
“My heartfelt belief that East End audiences would embrace a series of spring concerts was confirmed last season,” said Marya Martin, the founder and artistic director of the series. “I am touched by the wonderful reaction from this community.”
Michael Lawrence, executive director of the festival, said, “Our audience recognizes the new spring series as an investment in the Hamptons community, and we have experienced an increase in support as a direct result. We believe it also helped create momentum for the summer, as the 2015 festival drew record numbers in audience and ticket revenue.”
The first concert, on Saturday at 6 p.m., called “Bach’s World,” revolves around the life and times of the great composer, and features Kenneth Weiss, one of today’s foremost harpsichordists, who has roots in Montauk.
Mr. Weiss is a native of New York City whose parents bought land and built a house in Montauk in the mid-1970s when he was 12, so a good part of his growing up was on the East End. Yes, there was the beach, fishing, and stargazing with his father, an amateur astronomer, but perhaps more significantly, he remembers the concerts at the Montauk Library.
When the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival began, Mr. Weiss was in college and then living mostly abroad, so his first engagement with the festival wasn’t until 2014. Combining the world-class music making of the festival with a corner of the world that still feels like home is particularly meaningful to him. Although he is based in Europe, he still spends as much time in the summer as he can at the house in Montauk, and tries to lighten his teaching and performing schedule then so it can truly be a time of relaxation.
He said recently that he especially enjoys performing with the Bridgehampton festival because “most people are away from the 9-to-5 routine, and I think they come to a concert more like they did in the 18th or 19th century.”
“People listen to music differently” when they are not in the city, Mr. Weiss said. The relaxed pace “takes concert-going back to what it used to be.”
One of his recent projects has been performing Bach’s complete “Well-Tempered Clavier.” On his website, a different Prelude and Fugue from the set is posted each week, with a written commentary. With it, he offers a “medical prescription”: “A Prelude and Fugue a day can be said to hold life’s tensions at bay.”
Some of his most recent recitals have been in Nuremburg, Barcelona, Geneva, Antwerp, Madrid, Santander, Lisbon, Innsbruck, and Bruges. He teaches at the Paris Conservatory and has released recordings with Satirino records.
Along with Mr. Weiss, the Feb. 27 concert will have onstage two up-and-coming artists, Bella Hristova on violin and Tien-Hsin Cindy Wu on violin and viola, with the festival veterans Edward Arron on cello and Ms. Martin on flute. Besides J.S. Bach’s Trio Sonata in G, there will be one of Corelli’s groundbreaking trio sonatas, a quartet by Bach’s friendly rival Telemann, and a sampling of the legacy of his sons C.P.E. and J.C. Bach.
On April 9 the Miro Quartet will return for a second season, with a challenging and dramatically intense program of Ginastera’s dynamic first string quartet and two of Beethoven’s quartets, the F minor, known as the Serioso, and the C major, one of the so-called Razumovsky quartets, named after the Russian count and ambassador who gave him the commission.
The members of the Miro Quartet are Daniel Ching, violin, William Fedkenheuer, violin, John Largess, viola, and Joshua Gindele, cello. The Denver Post has said, “No passing sensation, the Miro Quartet is surely among the most promising chamber ensembles around.”
How can the combination of Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert be topped? That is the lineup for May 14, with the “London” Trio No. 1, the Piano Trio in C, and the Piano Trio in E flat, respectively, with Ms. Martin again on flute, the summertime regulars Ani Kavafian and Peter Wiley on violin and cello, and the young and rising pianist Juho Pohjonen.
The three concerts will take place at the festival’s main venue, the Bridgehampton Presbyterian Church, on Saturdays at 6. Tickets are $50 or $40. The student ticket for $10 that was introduced last spring will also be available, as well as discounted pricing for subscribers to all three concerts.
More information is at bcmf.org or 212-741-9403. More about Mr. Weiss can be found at satirino.fr. The complete summer program for the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival will be announced in May.