Review by Laura McDowell for CVNC
January 13, 2012

A program of immortal composers Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Brahms need not be all about pyrotechnics, hyped energy, and smoking instruments. As the musicians of the American Chamber Players demonstrated so ably in this performance presented by Asheville Chamber Music at the Unitarian Universalist Church such a concert of “immortal” music may as well move the heart with its forthright melodiousness, elegant shapes, and beautiful, quiet moments, as impress with its technical demands. The string players were violist Miles Hoffman, spokesman extraordinaire and the ensemble’s founder; Joanna Mauer, violin; and Stephen Balderston, cellist. Sara Stern, flute, regularly performs with the ensemble, and Reiko Uchida was the guest pianist.

Hoffman, of course, is well known to NPR radio audiences as a lively and knowledgeable commentator on classical music. His founding in 1982 of the Library of Congress Summer Chamber Festival led to the formation of the American Chamber Players…………….

To read the full review CLICK HERE……

By Mark-Ellis Bennitt of the Biltmore Beacon

The Asheville Chamber Music Series concluded its 58th season with a stunning performance by Miró Quartet. Although the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas in Austin is home to the award winning string quartet, they have performed throughout the world at prestigious music venues such as Carnegie Hall, the Concertgebouw, the Berlin Philharmonic’s Kammermusikaal and the Konzerthaus in Vienna. Last Friday night the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville, ACMS’ usual venue, was filled to capacity for a memorable concert of “firsts.”

The selections included “Quartet in C minor, D. 703, ‘Quartettsatz’” by Franz Schubert, “Quartet No. 5” by Phillip Glass, and “Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1” by Johannes Brahms.

In the pre-concert talk, presented on Thursday before the performance, Dr. Charles McKnight explained how this was to be a concert of firsts.

Please read the full review from the Biltmore Beacon by clicking here.

By Ted McIrvine of the Classical Voice of North Carolina

March 4, 2011, Asheville, NC: The Audubon Quartet, founded in 1974, is a storied chamber music group . . . .

In its appearance as part of the Asheville Chamber Music series, they presented a program of works by Beethoven, Serebrier, Wolf and most importantly Peter Schickele.  Introducing the program, Mr. Shaw apologized for the lack of a coherent theme to the evening; he need not have done so. The evening was like a sampler of mixed chocolates, each one to a different taste, but all delicious.

First up was Beethoven’s Quartet in G, Op. 18 No. 2. . . . The Haydnesque precision of early Beethoven was there, but the playing lacked those elements that distinguished Beethoven from his predecessors.

José Serebrier, born in Uruguay of Russian and Polish emigré parents, has had a modest career as a conductor and composer. His “Fantasia,” in versions for string orchestra and for string quartet, is one of his best-known works. The music would sound as dense as an Ernst Krenek atonal piece but is leavened by Latin rhythms that seep into the work. Played very well by the Audubon Quartet, “Fantasia” approached the romantic heights of Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht,” albeit Serebrier’s night seemed bleaker than Schoenberg’s.

Hugo Wolf’s “Italian Serenade” was [the] third work. One of the first mature works of this late Romantic composer, the “Italian Serenade” was composed for string quartet in 1887; it was orchestrated five years later. For those familiar with Wolf only as a composer of great German lieder, it was interesting to hear demonstrated his ability (and the Audubon Quartet’s ability) to “spin a story” with instruments alone.

Because Peter Schickele has been so successful as his amusing alter ego “P.D.Q. Bach,” he is insufficiently recognized as a serious composer. In 1983 the Audubon Quartet commissioned Schickele to write his String Quartet No. 1, titled American Dreams. The Audubon is the definitive interpreter of the work. Its five movements include a second movement that explores the timbres and rhythms of American jazz, a lyrical middle movement . . . based on the songs of birds and other sounds of the natural world, and a fourth movement that is pure dance . . . . The work is a unified and satisfying work that is profoundly American in concept. This was the highlight of the evening.

Extending what was already a generous length program, the Audubon Quartet played three Jerome Kern songs arranged for string quartet. “I Won’t Dance,” “All the Things You Are” and “I’m Old-Fashioned” made excellent use of the resources of a quartet – viola solos and all – and were an intoxicating nightcap.

For the complete review at CVNC, please click here.

By Laura McDowell of the Classical Voice of North Carolina

January 21, 2011 – Asheville, NC:  Frequently there will be a work programmed on a concert that is so markedly different that it not only calls attention to itself, but actually recalibrates how the rest of the concert’s music is heard. Such was the case with not one but two works on the Peabody Trio’s concert at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Asheville, an event sponsored by the Asheville Chamber Music Series. A work by post-Shostakovich Soviet composers Sofia Gubaidulina and Alfred Schnittke respectively led each half of the program, and each threw down a sort of sonic gauntlet, exposing revolutionary sound worlds that invited stillness and contemplation of the raw materials of music. . . .

The program opened with Gubaidulina’s “Dancer on a Tightrope” for violin and piano (1993), a piece in which the pianist’s music for the first half is generated from within the instrument by manipulation of the strings with a glass and the fingers. Occasionally its crescendos created such explosive booms that one was grateful for the remarks made beforehand that no harm would come to the instrument. The violin was consigned at first to very limited gestures . . . .

When the Brahms Trio No. 2 in C, Op. 87 (1880-82) followed, its sustained melodies in familiar contours and rippling piano chords came with their own shock value — all that sweetness and Romantic yearning! Within its four movements, the violin and cellist frequently played as a homorhythmic pair, with the piano a related but separate entity. . . . .

Alfred Schnittke’s “Stille Musik” (1979) for violin and cello led the second half after an intermission, an intriguing work of incessant, dissonant statements which dissolved into the realm of wailing harmonics on each instrument, ethereal and creepy, like disembodied souls. . . . This served as a sort of ghostly prelude to the Mendelssohn Trio in D minor, Op. 49 (1839). . . . The second movement, an achingly beautiful song without words, was the emotional heart of the work and the players delivered some of their most impassioned playing here. The difficult finale demanded all the energy, technical fire, and concentration they could muster — they delivered, and more, eliciting a rousing ovation from this nearly full house.

For the full review, please see:  http://cvnc.org/article.cfm?articleId=178.

by Laura McDowell of the Classical Voice of North Carolina

October 8, 2010, Asheville, NC: Named for Daedalus, the mythical creator of the Labyrinth of Crete and creature of perfect flight, the Quartet which bears his name opened the 58th season of the Asheville Chamber Music Series at the Unitarian Universalist Church with an exciting program of exacting quartets. The buzz about this young and vibrant aggregate of graduates from the Juilliard School, Curtis Institute, Cleveland Institute, and Harvard University is really true—they are accomplished, fearless, and deeply inspiring. . . .

The program began with Mozart’s String Quartet No. 23 in F, K. 590 (1790), the last of the so-called “Prussian Quartets” written by Mozart in a desperate bid to garner a commission from Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm II. As is true with so many of the composer’s works, the piece does not reflect the angst of the man, but rather an amazing and experimental response to trying days in a medium he knew so well. . . . .

Next on the program was the String Quartet, Op. 3 (1911) by Alban Berg (1885-1935), the last piece written during the composer’s studies with Arnold Schoenberg. The work had its genesis in his fifth piano sonata, a tonal work, which partially explains the quartet’s hybrid quality of tonal and atonal elements. . . . The Quartet’s performance, one of sustained concentration and high seriousness, exhibited a profound understanding of the piece.

The [final piece], Beethoven‘s String Quartet No. 12 in E-flat, Op. 127 (1825), was performed with Ms. Kim as first violinist. . . . Though plagued by this time by illness, total deafness, and numerous family problems, the work’s melodiousness exhibits a quality of direct appeal that belies the myth Beethoven was by now writing only for himself. . . .

See the full review at: http://cvnc.org/reviews/2010/102010/Daedalus.html