The St Olaf Choir celebrated its 100 anniversary with a mid-winter tour. The highlights of which are in this week's Regional Spotlight. Anton Armstrong leads the choir and orchestra of St Olaf College students in the Bach motet: Sing to the Lord a New Song, and the world premiere of a work written especially for the centennial celebration of the St Olaf Choir by St Olaf alumnus, Minnesota composer, Ralph M. Johnson: On Horizon's Brim.
Extremely sensitive to the color (timbre) of their own sound, the Ysaye Quartet performs with flair and great attention to musical nuance. The ensemble, which has been together for almost 30 years, brought all their gifts to a monumental work in the string quartet literature in a Schubert Club/Music in the Park Series concert. The Ysaye Quartet's performance of the Brahms String Quartet Op 51, No. 2 flows like liquid gold. That concert from just last month is this week's Regional Spotlight.
Johannes Brahms, like all composers, had a "day job." Brahms was the music director of several singing societies in Vienna. Pouring all of his melodic gifts into numerous works for choir, the choral pieces from his late fifties are especially filled with a kind of nostalgic golden glow. The South Dakota Chorale led by Charles Bruffy brings a slow-burning, mature passion to a performance of Brahms Four Quartets Op 92. Their performance from January 14 at Dordt College is in this week's Regional Spotlight.
Paul Boehnke, the music director of the Bach Society of Minnesota, has an adventurous palate. "Take a sweet piece of fruit on one hand and it's sweet. Take a pungent cheese on the other and it's pungent. If you put the two together you get something brand new!" The Bach Society was joined by a team of well-known jazz musicians from the twin cities in a session at the Maud Moon Weyerhaeuser Studio to reprise a program titled: Bach and Jazz. Their sweet/pungent performances are in this week's Regional Spotlight.
Embarking on a two year project to perform all the string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich, the Artaria Quartet is well on there way to mastering these highly respected and deeply emotional pieces. From a performance this past January at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church, the Artaria plays the Shostakovich Quartet No. 1 with raw power and wide-eyed enthusiasm.
The Fargo-Moorhead Symphony Orchestra features a Young Artist Solo Competition. This years finalists were all wonderful high-school aged musicians from the area. Their performances from the final round of the competition, recorded at Concordia College in Moorhead on January 8, are in this week's Regional Spotlight.
There are those magical piano recital performances where everything goes superbly. When the program sings, the piano purrs and the audiences listens as one to every nuance of the artist, it's something indescribable. Pianist Nelson Goerner gave a Frederic Chopin Society recital just this last weekend. By all accounts this was a performance that will live long in the memory. His Mozart performance was especially transcendent as you will hear in this week's Regional Spotlight.
The lake place can wait when the Summer Singers are performing. Vicki Peters is the director of a most dedicated group of singers who bring passion and commitment to their performances when most choral singers are taking time off. The joy of their music making will capture your heart. In this week's Regional Spotlight are two pieces recorded in concert last July. Both are hauntingly beautiful.
The story goes that Mozart composed the Trio for Clarinet, Viola and Piano while playing an outdoor form of bowling (think bocce). Mozart must have been winning that afternoon as the Kegelstatt Trio is good natured and full of joyful melodies.
A quick peek into performances from the northwestern part of the region are in this week's Regional Spotlight. We'll start with the Scherzo from the Brahms' FAE Sonata in a performance last Fall with violist Kate Hamilton, and we'll also hear pipa virtuoso Gao Hong from a concert given at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks.
