Alexander Hersh

Few things in our fractured world bring us together quite like music, connecting us with our shared humanity across borders and time.

Premiered by Clara Schumann in 1861 and famous for its fiery “Rondo alla Zingarese” finale, Brahms’s youthful and exuberant Piano Quartet in G Minor transports us to both a young Brahms (he was just 23 when he started composing it) and to Hungary with its folk inspiration. Two soaring solo works by Austrian American composer Fritz Kreisler magically take us to Vienna in the hands of virtuoso violinist and CMNW Protégé Alumnus Claire Wells. This program even spans the mightiest oceans with a new CMNW-commissioned premiere by Donghoon Shin, whose music encompasses influences of both his Korean heritage and his London home. Don’t miss this U.S. premiere featuring renowned mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano.

Few things in our fractured world bring us together quite like music, connecting us with our shared humanity across borders and time.

Premiered by Clara Schumann in 1861 and famous for its fiery “Rondo alla Zingarese” finale, Brahms’s youthful and exuberant Piano Quartet in G Minor transports us to both a young Brahms (he was just 23 when he started composing it) and to Hungary with its folk inspiration. Two soaring solo works by Austrian American composer Fritz Kreisler magically take us to Vienna in the hands of virtuoso violinist and CMNW Protégé Alumnus Claire Wells. This program even spans the mightiest oceans with a new CMNW-commissioned premiere by Donghoon Shin, whose music encompasses influences of both his Korean heritage and his London home. Don’t miss this U.S. premiere featuring renowned mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano.

Music can be a time-travel device or a teleportation machine. A chord progression might whisk you back a decade or two, like to a Tuesday in April. Or, the hint of a melody might bring to mind the sights and sounds of a foreign land you once visited. Composers continually draw on this miraculous sound-memory to create “musical postcards” that express their memories, and inspire ours.

Tchaikovsky’s famous Souvenir de Florence is literally a “wish-you-were-here” postcard to us, and exudes all of the warmth, vibrancy, and joy of his beloved visits to Italy to escape Russian winters. Even more adventurous is Maurice Ravel’s set of art songs, Chansons madécasses, inspired by the African tropical isles and set to evocative French poetry voiced by the captivating Jennifer Johnson Cano.

We’ll also travel in time to one of the most exciting eras of our own music and experience the world premiere of Steven Banks’s homage to the great Nina Simone in a piece that conjures the iconic style and voice of one of America’s most influential musicians.