“Putting it in movie-business terms, if a symphonic performance is a summer blockbuster, chamber music represents its art-house cousin,” writes Chris Gray in Tuesday’s (12/3) Houston Chronicle. “ ‘A chamber-music performance truly is a snapshot in time—even the same players performing the same piece could never recreate the exact experience from night to night,’ … says Robin Kesselman, the Houston Symphony’s principal double bassist…. From 1988 to 1999, the Houston Symphony Chamber Players once filled that niche…. Now it’s back. After offering chamber-music performances before select concerts in recent seasons, last month the symphony announced a new chamber series that begins Friday … World-renowned violinist Gil Shaham, in town to perform Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D major with the orchestra this weekend, will sit in on the same composer’s Clarinet Quintet in B minor…. According to Rebecca Zabinski, the symphony’s director of artistic planning, almost 50 percent of the orchestra’s personnel will participate in the new series, [with] programming … entirely suggested by the musicians…. The players performing Richard Strauss’s ‘Metamorphosen’ septet, another selection on Friday’s concert, began rehearsing before the series was officially announced—‘just because they really wanted to play it together,’ says Zabinski.”
To read Symphony magazine’s article about orchestral musicians and chamber music, visit Symphony’s website.
Posted December 6, 2019
