Classical Music Magic in Fryeburg July 22, 2023

 

Classical Music Magic in Fryeburg

Saturday, July 22^th

7 PM Fryeburg New Church

    The Sebago Long-Lake Music Festival musicians visit Fryeburg to present a community concert on Saturday, July 22at 7 PM at Fryeburg New Church at 12 Oxford Street. This concert is a pay-what-feels-right-to-you event. Donations are gratefully accepted and will offset the expenses incurred in producing the concert. Two Fryeburg churches are working together with The Sebago Long Lake Music Festival to produce this concert: First Congregational Church of Fryeburg and Fryeburg New Church.

    The festival's world class musicians, who gather at Deetrees Theatre in Harrison, Maine each summer to play a diverse program of classical music to rave reviews, also share their music with surrounding communities, supported by a grant from the Ham Charitable Foundation. That generosity allows those of us in the hinterlands to enjoy beautiful music near to home.

    The musicians visiting are Susan Rotholz, flute; Eliot Bailen, cello; and Mihae Lee, piano. The three will present music by George Friedrich Handel, Heitor Villa Lobos, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Francis Poulenc. Listeners will be on the edge of their seats, drawn into the sound worlds created by composers creating music across four centuries. From early in the 1700s come a four-movement sonata for cello and flute written by Handel. This counterpoint masterpiece will carry us through four moods. The Jet Whistle, a piece by Brazillian composer Villa-Lobos, who wrote complex classical forms in 20^th century after having supported himself as a vagabond musician playing Brazillian folk music, brings excitement and suspense to the program, punctuated by the beauty of flute and cello sonoroties. This piece will ring in the resonant space at New Church—a very lively acoustic venue.

    Also on the program are a duo for flute and cello by Beethoven. The careful crafstmanship Beethoven exerted on his works sparkles in the exchange between the flute's sweet upper ranges and the cello's ability to span many registers. The pièce de résistance that ends the program in the Sonata for flute and piano by Francis Poulenc. This masterpiece showcases early twentieth-century tonal language and the extreme ranges of the piano against virtuosic flute playing without sacrificing the lyrical power of melody.

    The concert will take place at Fryeburg New Church at 12 Oxford Street in Fryeburg at 7 PM on July 22. Contact Ellen Schwindt for more information: ellen.m.schwindt@gmail.com.