The Helicon Foundation: June 2008

The Helicon Foundation's 24th Season

James Roe, Artistic Director

William A. Simon, President
Albert Fuller, Founder

It is with great pleasure that I announce the concerts of The Helicon Foundation’s twenty-fourth season.

Each year, Helicon presents a series of four chamber music concerts—called Symposiums—in an oak-paneled music room on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. These concerts offer proximity to world-class performances, insightful programming, camaraderie, and immersion in chamber music’s intimate world.

Our 2008-2009 season takes the theme of great musical cities and presents music spanning four centuries played on instruments from the time the music was composed. We begin with music from New York and Boston, written during the fertile first decades of the 20th Century. Vienna is represented in the sublime music of Mozart’s last years. For the splendid music of Baroque Italy we center on Rome and the radiating influences of that city’s great composers. We conclude in one of the celebrated salons of 19th-century Paris.

Accompanying us on this tour is an impressive roster of today’s most exciting chamber musicians, including violinists, Jennifer Frautschi, Monica Huggett, and Mark Steinberg; pianist, Pedja Muzijevic; tenor, Nicholas Phan; historical clarinet expert, Eric Hoeprich; cornetto virtuoso, Bruce Dickey, and Brooklyn Rider, the exciting young string quartet founded by Colin and Eric Jacobsen.

You can be a part of this exciting season. Attendance at Helicon's events is by tax-deductible subscription. This Helicon Membership contribution guarantees your seats in one of New York City’s cultural gems.

For information on becoming a Helicon Member, please email: HeliconFoundation@gmail.com or write:

The Helicon Foundation
2067 Broadway, Studio 50
New York, New York, 10023

Symposium 87 - November 2, 2008

Helicon's 24th Season Explores Great Musical Cities

Symposium 87 — NEW YORK & BOSTON
November 2, 2008
“AMERICAN VISIONS & VISIONARIES”

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Nicholas Phan, tenor
James Roe, oboe
Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Brooklyn Rider String Quartet
Alex Sopp, fife

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Charles Loeffler Rhapsody for Oboe, Viola and Piano
Songs by Charles Ives
Samuel Barber String Quartet, Op. 11
John Cage In a Landscape
Amy Beach Piano Quintet in F# Minor, Op. 67

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Helicon opens its twenty-fourth season with a Symposium dedicated to the multi-faceted voices of American composers. We begin in 1901 at the dawn of the “American Century” with the evocative music of French-immigrant, Charles Loeffler, and then move to iconoclast, Charles Ives for his quirky, touching songs steeped in American folk music. Samuel Barber’s String Quartet follows with its gripping “Adagio for Strings,” famously featured in Oliver Stone’s “Platoon.” After intermission, Pedja Muzijevic plays the hypnotic In a Landscape by visionary genius, John Cage, and then is joined by the young string quartet, Brooklyn Rider, for Amy Beach’s lush Piano Quintet of 1907.

Nicholas Phan, tenor

James Roe, oboe

Pedja Muzijevic, piano

Brooklyn Rider

Alex Sopp, fife

THE HELICON FOUNDATION
James Roe, Artistic Director
William A. Simon, President
Albert Fuller, Founder

Symposium 88 - December 7, 2008

Helicon's 24th Season Explores Great Musical Cities

Symposium 88 — VIENNA
December 7, 2008
“TWO LATE MOZART QUINTETS”

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Eric Hoeprich, clarinet
Mark Steinberg, violin
Claire Jolivet, violin
David Cerutti, viola
Jessica Troy, viola
Myron Lutzke, ‘cello

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Quintet for Strings in D Major, K. 593
Quintet for Clarinet and Strings in A Major, K. 581

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Mozart lived out his final years in the sophisticated musical world of late 18th-century Vienna. This program pairs two of his masterpieces from that time in vivid period-instrument performances. Helicon’s internationally distinguished ensemble features the world’s foremost expert on historical clarinets, Amsterdam-based, Eric Hoeprich, who designs and builds his own instruments to period specifications. Our 88th Symposium opens with Mozart’s sublime String Quintet, K. 593. Written within a year of the composer’s death, it evinces no sign of diminished powers, but instead overflows with vigor, invention, and joy. Mozart’s beloved Clarinet Quintet is among the finest achievements of his last years and combines graceful intimacy with sparkling soloistic display.

Eric Hoeprich, clarinet

Mark Steinberg, violin

Myron Lutzke, cello

Claire Jolivet, violin

David Cerutti, viola

Jessica Troy, viola

THE HELICON FOUNDATION
James Roe, Artistic Director
William A. Simon, President
Albert Fuller, Founder

Symposium 89 - April 5, 2009

Helicon's 24th Season Explore Great Musical Cities

Symposium 89 — ROME
April 5, 2009
“CURIOSE INVENZIONI"
MUSICAL FIREWORKS FROM 17th-CENTURY ITALY

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ENSEMBLE GALATEA
Richard Savino, guitar
Bruce Dickey, cornetto
Julie Andrijeski, violin
Paul Beier, lute & theorbo
Gianluca Capuano, organ

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Improvisations on the music of Palastrina
and virtuoso chamber works by Marini, Castello, Buonamente, and Rognoni

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Helicon’s 89th Symposium features the world’s foremost virtuoso on the nearly forgotten instrument, the cornetto, Rome-based American, Bruce Dickey. The cornetto is a wind instrument fashioned out of a tube of curved wood wrapped in leather. It has finger holes like a recorder and a small mouthpiece like a trumpet. Its haunting tone bears an uncanny likeness to the human voice, and though not widely known today, the cornetto vied with the violin for virtuosic dominance in 17th-century Italy.

This program offers a rare opportunity to hear this fascinating instrument showcased with the violin in beautiful, ancient music of the Italian Baroque. It will be an evening of musical discoveries of exceptional beauty and invention.

The CORNETTO

Richard Savino, guitar

Julie Andrijeski, violin

Bruce Dickey, cornetto

THE HELICON FOUNDATION
James Roe, Artistic Director
William A. Simon, President
Albert Fuller, Founder

Symposium 90 - May 17, 2009

Helicon's 24th Season Explores Great Musical Cities

Symposium 90 — PARIS
May 17, 2009
“THE CELEBRATED SALON of ERNEST CHAUSSON”

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Jennifer Frautschi, violin
Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Harumi Rhodes, violin
John Marcus, violin
Hsin-Yun Huang, viola
Matthew Herren, ’cello

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César Franck Sonata for Violin and Piano
Ernest Chausson Concerto for Violin, Piano & Strings

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We complete our tour of great musical cities in 19th-century Paris, where composer Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) hosted his famous salon at 22 Boulevard de Courcelles. There he welcomed France’s leading artists, poets, musicians, and intellectuals to exchange ideas and introduce new work. The two pieces on this program were dedicated to a member of this circle, the prodigious violin virtuoso Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931), whose playing inspired many composers to write works for him. In Helicon’s 21st-century salon, we are fortunate to regularly hear the inspiring collaborations of Jennifer Frautschi and Pedja Muzijevic, who will be joined by an ensemble of new and familiar faces for these opulent works from the height of French Romanticism.

Jennifer Frautschi and Pedja Muzijevic