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The first — and oldest — tune will be Mozart’s sunny Quartet for Flute and Strings in C major, one his best-loved works for an instrument he purportedly hated.
Michael Webster’s Sonata Cho-Cho San for Flute, Clarinet and Piano is based on popular arias from Puccini’s 1904 tragic opera “Madama Butterfly.”
Bohuslav Martinů wrote his charming Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Cello and Piano in 1947 using old Czech tunes.
A rousing finish to the evening is Kenji Bunch’s toe-tapping “Ralph’s Old Records,” guaranteed to send Brightmusic attendees home with a lingering smile.
Single admission tickets are $20 at the door. Admission is free for students and active-duty military with ID. The large, comfortable sanctuary of First Baptist Church allows for social distancing for the safety of the audience.
Here’s a thumbnail of the program:
Mozart, Quartet for Flute and Stings in C major, K. 285b
Webster, Sonata Cho-Cho San for Flute, Clarinet and Piano
Martinů, Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Cello and Piano, H. 315
Bunch, “Ralph’s Old Records” for Violin/Viola, Cello, Flute, Clarinet and Piano
Brightmusic Musicians for this concert will include Gregory Lee (violin), Samuel Formicola (violin and viola), Mark Neumann (viola), Meredith Blecha-Wells (cello), Parthena Owens (flute), Lisa Harvey-Reed (oboe), Chad Burrow (clarinet) and Amy I-Lin Cheng (piano).
Some details about this concert’s great music:
Mozart is generally believed to have despised the flute, a notion based solely on a letter to his father, who was on his young son’s case for failure to fulfill a lucrative commission.
The frequently-petulant youth wrote back to his father, “I am quite inhibited when I have to compose for an instrument which I cannot endure,” seemingly to blame the flute for his unwillingness to finish the task.
Indeed, as some of his most cherished music is written for the flute, it has often been asked how he could have composed so splendidly for an instrument he detested. The C-major quartet is a shining example of his skill with the instrument.
Commissioned by an amateur flutist, what the two-movement quartet lacks in virtuosic demands is more than compensated for by its simple elegance and sheer beauty.
Michael Webster’s trio, Sonata Cho-Cho San, named for the tragic figure in Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” and based on popular themes from the opera, “is not the typical virtuosic operatic potpourri. Rather, it follows the plot, resembling a sonata mirroring Puccini’s use of recurring and developing themes . . . [making] the most of the winds as versatile performers,” writes the publisher.
“In pure chamber music I am always more myself,” Bohuslav Martinů wrote a friend in 1947. “I cannot tell you with what happiness I begin to compose chamber music.”
That same year he wrote his deeply personal and expressive Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Cello and Piano, and his love affair with the form becomes apparent.
The quartet is written in the graceful neo-classical style, a tribute to Mozart, while also containing elements of old Czech folk tunes, which he would frequently turn to throughout his career.
Based on a collection of his father’s old 78 rpm records, Kenji Bunch’s “Ralph’s Old Records” is a fresh take on old depression-era tunes with which Kenji grew up.
“My dad’s name is Ralph Bunch. He has a bunch of records,” he wrote on his Facebook page. Some of the tunes may be familiar, but all of them will have a engaging familiarity in the style—full of jazz, whimsy and humor.
Bunch, a violinist and critically-acclaimed composer based in Portland, Oregon, and one of America’s hottest young-ish composers (he is 48), is a graduate of the Juilliard School. He combines elements of jazz, bluegrass and hiphop with more classical and traditional American forms.
Bunch has won “a reputation as one of the nation’s finest and most listener-friendly composers of his generation,” wrote The Oregonian in a review.
The Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble is Oklahoma City’s foremost presenter of classical chamber music.
