Weekend Concert Series
Sunday, January 26, 2025 at 1:30 PM
CLAREMONT TRIO
Robert Schumann Trio No. 1 in D Minor, Op. 63 (1847)
Rebecca Clarke Piano Trio (1921)
Charlotte Sohy Piano Trio, Op. 24 (1931)
We are thrilled to open our Winter/Spring season with the return of the wonderful Claremont Trio. Schumann’s first piano trio is his most performed, and perhaps his most Romantic. The modernist music of the English-American composer Rebecca Clarke was happily revived in the 1970s. Charlotte Sohy, whose lyrical trio the Claremonts will perform, is one of the least known French chamber music composers of the early 1900s; a revival of her music may finally be at hand.
The Claremont Trio is:
Emily Bruskin, violin | Julia Bruskin, cello | Sophiko Simsive, piano
Sunday, February 2, 2025 at 1:30 PM
MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN, PIANO
Franz Joseph Haydn Sonata in D Major, Hob.XVI:37 (published 1780)
Nikolai Medtner Improvisation in B-flat minor, Op. 31, No. 1 (1914)
Danza Festiva, Op. 83, No. 3 (1919–22)
Sergei Rachmaninoff Etude-Tableau, Op. 39, No. 5 (1916–17)
Stevan Wolpe
Frank Zappa
Piano Sonata No. 2, Op. 36 (1931 version)
Passacaglia (1936)
Ruth Is Sleeping (about 1991)
John Oswald TIP (2021)
Marc-André Hamelin holds a unique position among star pianists. In his concerts and in the over 70 discs he has released, his peerless technique has given him entree into repertoire too fearsome for most players; his insatiable curiosity has led him to uncover hundreds of works; and his penetrating musicianship makes an inarguable case for whatever music he is championing. We are thrilled to have him make his long-overdue Gardner Museum debut.
CLAREMONT TRIO
MARC-ANDRÉ HAMELIN
BROOKYN RIDER YARN/WIRE WITH NICOLETTA BERRY
Sunday, February 9, 2025 at 1:30 PM BROOKLYN RIDER
Henry Purcell Fantasia upon One Note, Z.745 (about 1680)
W. A. Mozart
String Quartet No. 19 in C major, K. 465 “Dissonance” (1785)
Johannes Brahms String Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1 (1865–1873)
Arvo Pärt Solfeggio (1963)
Betsy Jolas String Quartet No. 3 “9 Etudes” (1973)
This path-breaking string quartet’s Gardner Museum debut includes one of Purcell’s late set of viol fantasias in which he weaves harmonic magic around a C held throughout the piece. FrenchAmerican Betsy Jolas has a love of early music (her seventh string quartet is an homage to Purcell’s “one note” fantasia). This will be a rare chance to hear her third quartet, a set of 11 short bravura movements, each exploring a different facet of string playing. Mozart’s “Dissonance” is one of the set of six quartets he dedicated to Haydn after the latter expressed enthusiasm for them.
Brooklyn Rider is:
Johnny Gandelsman, violin | Colin Jacobsen, violin | Nicholas Cords, viola | Michael Nicolas, cello Fitzpatrick Family Concert
Sunday, February 23, 2025 at 1:30 PM
YARN/WIRE WITH NICOLETTA BERRY, SOPRANO
Tyondai Braxton Music for Ensemble and Pitch-Shifter Delay (2012)
Steve Reich Quartet (2013)
Misato Mochizuki Le Monde des ronds et des carrés (2015)
Phil Kline ghost story (2025)*
*world premiere Gardner Museum commission
Yarn/Wire makes its Gardner Museum debut. The program includes both a quartet by Tyondai Braxton—composer, performer, and founder of the band Battles—as well as a work Yarn/Wire commissioned from the Tokyo-based Mochizuki. Steve Reich calls the score of his thrilling Quartet “one of the more complex I have composed.” Finally, the Museum has commissioned a new work from composer Phil Kline exploring the life and times of Isabella Stewart Gardner. Yarn/Wire is:
Laura Barger, piano | Julia Den Boer, piano | Russell Greenberg, percussion
Sae Hashimoto, percussion
Sunday, March 2, 2025 at 1:30 PM
SIMONE PORTER, VIOLIN WITH PALLAVI MAHIDHARA, PIANO
Beethoven Romance No. 2 in F Major, Op. 50 (1798)
Richard Strauss Violin Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 18 (1887)
Lili Boulanger Deux Moreceaux (1911/1914)
George Antheil Sonata No. 1 for Violin and Piano (1923)
Stravinsky Berceuse from The Firebird (1910/1932)
Danse Russes from Petrushka (1911/1932)
The Seattle-raised violinist Simone Porter is a phenomenon. At 10, she made her professional debut as soloist with the Seattle Symphony; at 13 she played with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra. Now 28, she plays with both uncanny beauty of tone and startling musical insight. This thrilling program will mark her Gardner debut.
Sunday, March 9, 2025 at 1:30 PM
ACRONYM WITH REGINALD MOBLEY, COUNTERTENOR
Isabella Leonarda motets
Giovanni Valentini Hodie Christus Natus Est Sonata a 3 in C Major
Tarquinio Merula Canzonetta Sopra Alla Nonna
Leopold I Morte a Christo
Barbara Strozzi cantata
Caterina Giani Liebster Jesu
The excellent period-instrument ensemble ACRONYM returns to the Gardner, joined by the superb Boston-based countertenor Reginald Mobley. Their program explores lesser-known treasures of Baroque music, including a heart-rending choral-prelude by the elder cousin of J.S. Bach. Notably, ACRONYM is bringing works by four remarkable Italian women composers, as well as a motet by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I.
ACRONYM is:
Kivie Cahn-Lipman, viola da gamba & violoncello | Doug Balliett, violone | Paul Dwyer, cello Elliot Figg, harpsichord & organ | Edwin Huizinga, violin | Loren Ludwig, viola da gamba
Kyle Miller, viola | Johanna Novom, violin | Adriane Post, violin | Beth Wenstrom, violin
Chloe Fedor, violin
Sunday, March 16, 2025 at 1:30 PM
JOHAN DALENE, VIOLIN WITH SAHUN SAM HONG, PIANO
Robert Schumann Violin Sonata No. 1 in A minor, Op. 105 (1851)
Edvard Grieg Violin Sonata No. 2 in G Major, Op. 13 (1867)
Lili Boulanger D’un matin de printemps (1917–18)
Maurice Ravel Tzigane (1924)
Grażyna Bacewicz Kołysanka (Lullaby) for Violin and Piano (1952)
Humoresque for Violin and Piano (1953)
Witold Lutosławski Partita for Violin and Piano (1984)
At age 24, the dazzling Swedish-Norwegian violinist Johan Dalene makes his Gardner Museum debut. His wide-ranging program includes sonatas by Schumann and Grieg. The latter, written in the weeks following Grieg’s marriage to soprano Nina Hagerup, bursts with folksy Norwegian joy, touched here and there by passing Nordic shadows. This program is performed in memory of James Lawrence.
Sunday, March 23, 2025 at 1:30 PM
NEVERMIND
Ennemond Gaultier, “Le Vieux” Tombeau de Mézengeau (1600s)
Marin Marais
Les voix humaines (1701)
Caprice ou Sonate from Suite d’un goût étranger (1717)
Élisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre Sonata for violin and harpsichord in D minor with viola da gamba obligato (1707)
Jean-Féry Rebel
Sonata No. 6 for violin (1713)
François Couperin selections from Concerts Royaux (1722)
French harpsichordist Jean Rondeau dazzled the Gardner audience with his performance of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. He returns this season with his colleagues in the period-instrument ensemble NEVERMIND to explore French Baroque chamber music. NEVERMIND is:
Louis Creac’h, violin | Robin Pharo, viola da gamba | Jean Rondeau, harpsichord
JOHAN DELENE
ROBIN PHARO
LOUIS CREAC’H
JEAN RONDEAU
MORGENSTERN PIANO TRIO
Sunday, March 30, 2025 at 1:30 PM
MORGENSTERN PIANO TRIO
Johannes Brahms Piano Trio Op. 8 in B-Major (1854, rev. 1889)
Germaine Tailleferre Piano Trio (1916–17, rev. 1978)
Lili Boulanger D’un matin de printemps (1917–18)
Gabriel Fauré Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 120 (1923)
Two women numbered among the first rank of French composers in the early 1900s. Tailleferre’s trio deftly juxtaposes Ravel-like opulence to the urbane boulevardier-chic of the group of composers called “Les Six,” of which Tailleferre was the only woman member. Lili Boulanger’s trio is an arrangement of perhaps her most beautiful orchestral work. Brahms and Fauré were both composers Isabella Stewart Gardner met personally. She collected two remarkable relics from them: a musical manuscript of Fauré’s and a cigarette hand-rolled by Brahms!
The Morgenstern Piano Trio is:
Catherine Klipfel, piano | Stefan Hempel, violin | Emanuel Wehse, cello
This concert is the annual Coogan Concert made possible by Deborah W. Coogan and is in memory of her late husband Peter Weston Coogan.
Sunday, April 6, 2025 at 1:30 PM
SŌ PERCUSSION
Julius Eastman Stay on It (1973)
Julia Wolfe Forbidden Love (2019)
America’s percussion superstars return to the Gardner Museum for the first time in over a decade, joined by a coterie of friends to perform Eastman’s joyful minimalist anthem, Stay On It. Julia Wolfe’s contemplative Forbidden Love finds Sō performing on the instruments of a string quartet, but in novel ways: “everything you aren’t supposed to do to stringed instruments,” in the words of the composer.
Sunday, April 13, 2025 at 1:30 PM
GENEVA LEWIS, VIOLIN
JESSICA BODNER, VIOLA
JAY CAMPBELL, CELLO
W.A. Mozart Divertimento in E-flat Major, K. 563 (1788)
Jean Sibelius String Trio in G minor (1893–94)
Clara Iannotta Siciliana-miniature (2009)
John Zorn Hamlet (2024)*
*world premiere Gardner Museum commission
In 2024, three dazzling young players formed this new string trio, which makes its Gardner debut this season. Their program is rooted with Mozart’s landmark Divertimento, which numbers among his greatest works in any medium. Sibelius’s astonishing singlemovement Trio is almost completely unknown. It shows the composer at his most audacious and haunting. The trio by Clara Iannotta, an Italian working in Berlin, is at once charming and delightfully uncanny and frighteningly modern. John Zorn’s new trio, commissioned for this program, is a virtuosic tone-poem after Hamlet. This concert is made possible by the generous support of the Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Fund.
GENEVA LEWIS
JESSICA BODNER
JAY CAMPBELL
STERLING ELLIOTT
Sunday, April 27, 2025 at 1:30 PM
STERLING ELLIOTT, CELLO
Amy Beach Dreaming from 4 Sketches, Op. 15 (1892) Romance, Op. 23 (1893)
William Grant Still Mother and Child (1943)
George Walker Cello Sonata (1957)
Jean R. Perrault Brother Malcolm (2009)
Kevin Day Cello Sonata (2016) Gymnopédie I (2018)
Winner of the 2021 Avery Fisher Career Grant, cellist Sterling Elliott returns to the Gardner Museum with an exploration of the “American” sound as employed by composers from around the country and from diverse backgrounds. Boston’s Amy Beach leads off the program with two late 1800s works. Elliott plays a beautiful miniature by William Grant Still, the Arkansas-born mid-century composer of operas, symphonies, and chamber music. New Jersey’s George Walker, an intent modernist later in his career, wrote this glorious sonata in his early rhapsodic, “American” period. Haitian-American Jean Perrault is a composer, violinist, and conductor working in Minnesota. West Coast composer Kevin Day embraces the classic American sound, along with influences from jazz, R&B, and soul music.
Music at the Gardner is supported by Nora McNeely Hurley / Manitou Fund. Hemenway & Barnes LLP is the lead corporate sponsor of the Weekend Concert Series. The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: The Coogan Concert in memory of Peter Weston Coogan; Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; David Scudder in memory of his wife, Marie Louise Scudder; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. Music at the Gardner is also supported in part by New Music USA’s Organization Fund, Nicie and Jay Panetta, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which is supported by the state of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
MESSAGE FROM GEORGE STEEL ABRAMS CURATOR OF MUSIC
Dear Friends,
This Winter, we are delighted to host many performers in their Calderwood Hall debuts. We are also thrilled to present enthralling pieces of music, ancient and modern, including world-premiere Gardner Museum commissions from John Zorn and Phil Kline. As ever, it will be a season of discovery. We look forward to welcoming you!
Yours,
George Steel
Abrams Curator of Music
TICKET INFORMATION
WEEKEND CONCERT SERIES IN CALDERWOOD HALL
SEATING SECTIONS AND RATES
Performance Level and First Balcony:
Members $65, Adults $85, Seniors $75, Students & Children ages 7–17 $20
Second Balcony:
Members $50, Adults $65, Seniors $55, Students & Children 7–17 $20
Third Balcony:
Members $40, Adults $50, Seniors $45, Students & Children ages 7–17 $20
MEMBER CONCERT PRESALE
November 13–19
Purchase tickets before they become available to the general public on November 20.
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Open daily from 10 am–4 pm.
Open until 6 pm on Thursdays; Closed Tuesdays.
Additional information about seating sections and policies is available online. Concert programs and COVID guidelines are subject to change; please see the website for up-to-date information.
Member Presale Starts November 13!
COVER: Anders Zorn (Swedish 1860–1920), Isabella Stewart Gardner in Venice , 1894. Oil on canvas, 91 x 66 cm (35 13/16 x 26 in.) Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston INSIDE: George Steel, Abrams Curator of Music , photo by Whitney Lawson; Claremont Trio, photo by Dario Acosta; Marc-Andre Hamelin, photo by Sim Cannetty-Clarke; Brooklyn Rider, photo by Marco Giannavola; Yarn/Wire, photo by Mark Sommerfeld; Simone Porter, photo by Elisha Knight; ACRONYM, photo by Jeff Weeks; Reginald Mobley, photo by Richard Dumas; Johan Dalene, photo by Marco Borregreve; Louis Creac’h, © Mathilde Assier; Robin Pharo, photo by Thomas O’Brien; Jean Rondeau, photo by Clement Vayssieres; Morgenstern Trio, photo by Irène Zandel; Sō Percussion, photo by Anja Schutz; Jessica Bodner, photo by Beowolf Sheehan; Jay Campbell, photo by Beowulf Sheehan; Geneva Lewis, photo by Matthew Holler; Sterling Elliot, photo by Denny Moes Media House.