Buffalo Chamber Players Open Their 10th Anniversary Season -

BY JAN JEZIORO

JoAnn Falletta and Dennis Kim help celebrate a decade of music making

The Buffalo Chamber Players (BCP),

most of whose musicians are also members of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, open their 10th Anniversary Season in the Albright-Knox Art Gallery on Thursday, October 13 at 7:30pm. Special guests, Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra music director JoAnn Falletta, playing the guitar, and BPO concertmaster, violinist Dennis Kim, will join the members of the BCP for the opening night performance.

Is it possible that the Buffalo Chamber Players have actually been performing for the last decade? It seems that it was only yesterday that the group’s founder and artistic director, BPO violist Janz Castelo introduced the newly formed chamber music ensemble at their first concert in their original home in the Buffalo Seminary. During the last decade the BCP has compiled an enviable record of concert performances, ranging from re-creating the semi-staged original early 1950’s Buffalo premiere of Stravinsky’s 1920’s influential theatrical work for chamber musicians, L’histoire du soldat, to offering a vivid interpretation of the Italian Renaissance composer Claudio Monteverdi’s haunting opera scena for three voices, Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda. One of the BCP’s most memorable offerings was its performance of Olivier’s Messiaen’s uniquely moving Quartet for the End of Time, written when the composer was a prisoner of the Germans after the Fall of France in 1940. The work received its premiere in the dead of a harsh winter, in the prisoner of war camp where Messiaen was being held. The late, much-loved Buffalo artist Catherine Parker created a series of paintings for this performance, one for each movement, and the projection of images of her paintings during the performance added a sense of poignancy to the occasion that remains unforgettable.

While reviving the best, and the sometimes overlooked gems of the very deep classical music repertory, the BCP has also demonstrated a firm commitment to expanding that repertory, both by sponsoring worldwide, open composer competitions for new pieces, and also by designating not one, but two composers-in-residence, Caroline Mallonée and Rob Deemer, whose Thorne Rooms for string trio draws inspiration from the artist Narcissa Niblack Thorne’s exquisitely crafted miniature rooms on exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago.

The program revisits two works from the ensemble’s first concert season, Mozart’s Oboe Quartet in F Major, K. 370/368b and the virtuosic Quartet No. 15 for viola, violin, cello and guitar by Niccolò Paganini, the undisputed supreme violinist of the first half of the 19th century. Rounding out the program is French composer Jean Françaix’s 1933 String Trio for violin, viola and cello.

Artistic director Janz Castelo says, “It is hard to believe we are turning ten years old. Time does fly when you’re having fun, Maestro Falletta was with us for our very first concert, and I’m thrilled she is again joining us for our ten-year anniversary. We are honored to continue our partnership with the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and look forward to bringing great music to Western New York audiences for many more years to come.”

A reception with the musicians will follow the performance. As an added benefit to concertgoers, the AK’s galleries will be open to ticket holders at no extra charge from 5 to 7:30pm. The AK Café will also be open for dinner, reservations required. Doors to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery open at 5 pm, with the performance commencing at 7:30 pm.

Tickets: $20, ($15 for AK members); Students: $5. Information: www.buffalochamberplayers.or

Borromeo Quartet at UB

The Slee/Visiting Artist Series opens at UB’s Slee Hall this Friday, October 7, at 7:30pm with a return performance by the members of the Borromeo Quartet, violinists Nicholas Kitchen and Kristopher Tong, violist Mai Motobuchi, and cellist Yeesun Kim. The focus of this season’s Slee/Visiting Artist Series will be the late chamber works of famous composers. This program includes Shostakovich’s  String Quartet No. 12 and Beethoven’s massive late quartet, the String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat major, Op. 130, with the original Grosse Fuge movement restored to its original place in the score.  Preludes and Fugues from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1, transcribed by violinist Nicholas Kitchen, will open the program.

Tickets: $15/10; free for UB students. Information: www.slee.buffalo.edu