42 years! Where has the time gone? Musically, the members of The Portland String Quartet can count the years with 42 Portland Concert Series, memorable tours, important reviews, 25 recording releases, outstanding guest artists, world premieres and exceptional students.
This 42nd Concert Season brings back one of our favorite guest artists, clarinetist Charles Neidich, with whom we first performed at the Rockport Festival in Massachusetts in 1985. It was Mozart then, and the music reached magical proportions. Great music always holds that potential, and working with one of the world’s foremost clarinetists will be a joy revisited.
Two masterpieces of the literature, Shostakovich’s Quartet No.8 and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden, are not only among our favorite works, but in different ways they bring back memories of our wonderful European river cruises. Who can forget experiencing the rebuilding of Dresden along the Elbe River, or thinking of the great composers for whom Vienna was their beloved home on the Danube?
The world premiere of Gil Shohat’s Saxophone Quintetat Harvard University was a highlight for us in the Fall of 2008. The musical and technical demands of that work equaled any challenge we had faced previously (Karel Husa’s Quartet No. 3 comes to mind). This season we approach another Shohat premiere, The Elysian Plains Quartet. Expect the unexpected as this inventive music keeps us growing professionally.
For those few who still hold on to the notion that musical creativity ended with Brahms, Phil Kline’s John the Revelator Mass will surely win you over with its sheer beauty and expressive depth. We are thrilled to be part of Portland Ovations’ presentation of Kline’s John the Revelator. We invite you, Maine’s largest and most knowledgeable chamber music audience, to join us, the vocal ensemble Lionheart and organist Ray Cornils at Merrill Auditorium, on May 15, 2011 for this unique final concert of our 42nd Season.
We thank the LARK Society for Chamber Music and you, our steadfast audience, for making these 42 years possible.
- Sincerely, The Portland String Quartet
