Join us on Sunday for a concert in a beautiful village.
Mountain Top Music teachers Chris
Nourse, violin and viola, and Ellen Schwindt, piano, perform Sonatas
by Mozart, Cage, Finzi and Schwindt at the Tamworth Congregational
Church on Sunday, November 10th, 2013 at 4:00 PM. The
program ranges over four centuries. The oldest piece on the program
is a violin sonata (K. 454) by Mozart. It is an unusual sonata, full
of operatic moments and mischievous themes. Two pieces on the program
come from the first and second halves of the 20th century.
Gerald Finzi wrote five bagatelles--trifles--in England in the first
half of the 20th century. These pieces are romantic
rambles through a lush harmonic landscape. This is perfect music to
play in the bucolic landscape of Tamworth village, bounded by
pastures and forests on every side. John Cage, working later in the
century and in the cacophony of New York City, could still imagine
complete peace—as is made obvious by his melodies for violin and
piano. Cage uses a very simple palette of sounds to create spare and
beautiful dances using delicate percussion from the piano and an
ethereal grace from the violin. The last piece on the program is a
premiere of a work Schwindt has been writing for the past year.
Showing influences by composers like Gerald Finzi and Bohuslav
Martinu, the sonata for viola and piano is neo-romantic in style and
incorporates changing meters, and rich harmonies.
