6 minute read
Basically Bach
By Sarah Beling
There’s nothing quite like a treasured tradition to kick off the holiday season—and local audiences are no doubt already looking forward to the Catskill Mountain Foundation’s annual Thanksgiving weekend concert with the Windham Festival Chamber Orchestra. This year’s evening-long program, Basically Bach, will feature the Orchestra along with acclaimed classical piano soloist Simone Dinnerstein at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center in Tannersville on November 25 at 7:30 pm.
The Windham Festival Chamber Orchestra’s long-standing relationship with CMF goes back to co-founder, composer, and conductor Robert Manno’s first foray into the Catskill Region more than 40 years ago. “In 1981 my wife, violinist Magdalena Golczewski, and I found a house and property just above the town of Windham—this became a refuge from NYC and our grueling schedule at the Metropolitan Opera,” said Manno. “We knew by the beginning of the 1990s that we would make Windham our full-time residence after leaving the MET,” he added. Manno and Golczewski began looking for a local venue to perform chamber music, and by 1997, the first Windham Chamber Music Festival held a performance at the former Centre Church Building in the center of town. “We totally overlooked the fact that the overwhelming majority of local residents had never been to a classical music concert and had never heard the term ‘chamber music,’” Manno told Chamber Music America of their first performance in the area. “However, remaining true to our individual tastes,” he added, “we presented a challenging program: the first performance of my 1995 String Sextet (a dark piece that has been likened by more than one reviewer to Schoenberg’s Verklarte Nacht) and Schubert’s great C Major Cello Quintet. This was definitely not an ‘easy listening’ concert, and yet not one of the 260 standing-room-only audience members left that night. That concert marked the beginning of a wonderful and exciting journey.”
Over the last 26 years, the orchestra has frequently collaborated with CMF and added performances in Hunter at the Red Barn and the Doctorow Center, as well as in Tannersville at the Orpheum. This year’s Thanksgiving weekend concert—which will feature a series of pieces by George Frideric Handel, Antonio Vivaldi, and of course, Johann Sebastian Bach—will be Dinnerstein’s introduction to Hunter and Tannersville audiences, an event that Manno said has long been in the works. “In mid-2005 we first heard and met Simone Dinnerstein perform the Goldberg Variations at a house concert in Columbia County,” said Manno. “Since our 2006 Windham schedule had already been set, we asked Simone to perform the Mozart Concerto #23 with the Festival Orchestra in 2007. When we met we didn’t know that she had already recorded the Goldberg for later release, that she would make her debut with the work at Carnegie Recital Hall in November 2005 and release the Teldec recording of it in August 2007,” he added. “In October of that year, Performance Today broadcast her Mozart Concerto from Windham and followed with subsequent re-broadcasts. Simone performed her wonderful Goldberg in Windham in 2008, appearing again in 2014 in a gorgeous Schumann Kinderszenen. Since then we’ve attended many of her performances at Bard, Maverick and Carnegie Hall.”
Windham Festival Orchestra’s Basically Bach program “came as a result of [CMF founding partner] Peter Finn’s love of Bach, a celebration of the 25th Anniversary of the Catskill Mountain Foundation, and a long-desired debut for Simone Dinnerstein in the Hunter/Tannersville area under CMF auspices,” added Manno. The Brooklyn-based Dinnerstein—who has been awarded such accolades as being “a unique voice in the forest of Bach interpretation” by The New York Times and “an artist of strikingly original ideas and irrefutable integrity” by the Washington Post—studied under Solomon Mikowsky, Maria Curcio and Peter Serkin and first rose to prominence after her 2007 recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. She’s gone on to record thirteen Billboard Classical chart-topping albums, play concert venues from Carnegie Hall to the Berlin Philharmonie, Sydney Opera House and the Kennedy Center, as well as collaborate with classical mainstays like Renée Fleming and André Previn.
Dinnerstein has also dedicated much of her career to expanding classical music’s reach beyond traditional venues and audiences, founding Neighborhood Classics, a concert series created to raise funds for New York City public school music education programs, and playing concerts around the country with The Piatigorsky Foundation, an organization committed to making sure that classical music is not “a luxury for an elite few, but a necessity of life for all.” Dinnerstein’s work with the Piatigorsky Foundation took her to perform the first piano recital in the Louisiana state prison system at the Avoyelles Correctional Center, and she has also performed at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra.
“I am really looking forward to collaborating with Bob and the musicians of the orchestra on this repertoire which is so special to me,” said Dinnerstein. “It will be my first performance of the F Major keyboard concerto, and it’s always fun to have musical dialogue with one flute, let alone with two! I think the audience will enjoy the bubbly joy of this particular work.”
“For the concertos on the program I requested the F Major Concerto #6 (Bach’s 1738 transcription of the 1721 Brandenburg Concerto #4),” added Manno of the process to put together the Bach program. “Simone chose the 1738 E Major Concerto #2 (the first two movements of which are Bach’s reworking of the
1726 Church Cantata #169 for alto solo, chorus and orchestra). The Handel Entrance of the Queen of Sheba, the Vivaldi Concerto for 2 Flutes, and the Bach Orchestral Suite #3 will serve as a wonderful welcome mat for Simone’s magical rendering of the Bach keyboard masterpieces that follow.” Dinnerstein added that “The second movement of the E Major keyboard concerto has its origins in one of Bach’s cantatas, and it will be a joy to sing this music on the piano with Bob as my partner, given his experience and expertise in the world of opera.”
Manno and his fellow musicians at the Windham Festival Orchestra are similarly enthused about what Dinnesterin will bring to the table. “Years ago harpsichordist Roslyn Tureck was known as the ‘High Priestess of Bach,’” said Manno. “I think it’s appropriate to call Simone today’s ‘High Priestess of Bach.’I am so delighted this is happening!” Manno hopes that Catskills audiences will not only delight in the privilege of getting to witness a peerless performer at her finest, but also gain a new appreciation through the Windham Festival Orchestra’s modern interpretation of such venerable classics. “It is the hope that this performance of the Concertos and the Orchestral Suite #3, coming 300 years after their inception,” said Manno, “will lead to a more enhanced and deeper appreciation of the genius of Bach.”
The Windham Festival Chamber Orchestra will perform at 7:30 pm on Saturday, November 25 at the Orpheum Performing Arts Center, 6050 Main Street, Hunter, NY 12485. Tickets purchased ahead are $25 adults; $20 seniors; $7 students. Ticketing fees and higher atthe-door ticket prices apply. To purchase tickets, visit catskillmtn.org, call 518 263 2063, or email boxoffice@catskillmtn.org.
