Renowned harpist June Han will make her second 2014 Bowdoin Festival appearance, opening the concert with violinist Muneko Otani in Currier’s Night Time, a work, in Currier’s own words, of “quietude, introversion, intimacy, and subdued restlessness.”

Violinist Renee Jolles will then lead Nicholas Canellakis, cello, and Constance Moore, piano, in Ravel’s revelatory, ground-breaking Piano Trio in A Minor.

The evening’s program will close with Schubert’s beloved Trout Quintet, performed by Frank Huang, violin; Caroline Coade, viola; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Kurt Muroki, doublebass; and Yong Hi Moon, piano.

Festival Fridays concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Brunswick High School’s Crooker Theater. Tickets are $40.

Beethoven String Quartets Monday Night

Beethoven’s string quartet cycle is being presented in its entirety this season by the Bowdoin Festival. The world-renowned Shanghai Quartet performs the sixth and final concert in the series on August 4, with Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1; String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135; and String Quartet No. 9 in C Major, Op. 59, No.3

Beethoven Mondays concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Brunswick High School’s Crooker Theater. Tickets are $40.

Wednesday Concert Presents Fung Premiere

The Festival’s Aug. 6, Wednesday Upbeat! concert will present the world premiere of a work for multiple percussionists, entitled The Voices Inside My Head, by guest composer Vivian Fung. The work was commissioned by the Aeolian Chamber Players in honor of the Bowdoin International Music Festival’s fiftieth anniversary season. The program also includes works by Ernest Bloch and Mikhail Glinka.

The duo of Sergiu Schwartz, violin, and Peter Basquin, piano, have been performing together for Bowdoin Festival audiences for several years. This year’s collaboration has resulted in Bloch’s Violin Sonata No. 2 (“Poeme Mystique”), a technically demanding but warm and lyrical work.

JUNO Award-winning Canadian composer Vivian Fung, an alumna of the Festival’s composition program, is known for music that merges Western forms with non-Western influences such as Balinese and Javanese gamelan and folk songs from minority regions of China. Luke Rinderknecht, Tony Guarino, and Christina Manceor perform on percussion.

In the finale, Mikhail Kopelman, the former first violin of the Borodin and Tokyo String Quartets, will lead a faculty ensemble in Glinka’s Grand Sextet in E-Flat Major. Kopelman will be joined by Renee Jolles, violin; Dimitri Murrath, viola; Nicholas Canellakis, cello; Kurt Muroki, doublebass; and Elizaveta Kopelman, piano.

Wednesday Upbeat! concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Studzinski Recital Hall on the Bowdoin campus. Tickets are $40.

Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music

Each year, the Charles Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music presents three days of concerts by renowned living composers, the Festival’s top student composers, and the winner of the annual Student Composition Competition. This year’s program will include past commissioned works and world premieres, including Luciano Berio’s O, King, George Crumb’s Eleven Echoes of Autumn, 1965, Mario Davidovsky’s Junctures, and Elliott Schwartz’ A Garden for RKB.

Gamper Festival concerts are held in Studzinski Recital Hall. Suggested donation $10.

Artists of Tomorrow

Artists of Tomorrow student concerts, featuring the Festival’s top students, will be held on Sunday afternoon at 1:30 p.m., and Tuesday at 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 p.m., Thursday at 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., and Friday at 12:30 p.m.

All Artists of Tomorrow concerts are held in Studzinski Recital Hall. Artists of Tomorrow programs are announced the day of the concert. To receive announcements of the programs by email, visit www.bowdoinfestival.org. Suggested donation $10.

Ray Chen Returns in Brahms Double Friday Night

The Bowdoin International Music Festival’s final concert, Friday, Aug. 8, will celebrate 50 years of artistic direction by Lewis Kaplan by presenting two his favorite works by Johannes Brahms, the Concerto for Violin and Cello, Op. 102 and String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36.

Frank Huang, concertmaster of the Houston Symphony and winner of the 2003 Naumburg Violin Competition, will lead the sextet. He will be joined by Janet Sung, violin; Rami Solomonow and Caroline Coade, viola; and Meta Weiss and Nicholas Tzavaras, cello.

Ray Chen, an alumnus of the Bowdoin Virtuoso program and a fast-rising soloist on the international touring circuit, returns to the Festival to perform the double concerto with David Requiro, winner of the 2008 Naumburg Violoncello Competition. Lewis Kaplan will conduct the Bowdoin Festival Orchestra.

Festival Fridays concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Brunswick High School’s Crooker Theater. Tickets are $40.

Bowdoin Festival Extra

The Bowdoin Festival’s educational series, Bowdoin Festival Extra, concludes with two events this week. On Saturday, August 2 at 10:30 a.m., the Festival will present its annual Family Concert, “Old MacDonald’s Farm” — and other String Quintet Adventures of Peace and Harmony at Brunswick’s Curtis Memorial Library. The event is offered in collaboration with the 10th anniversary of the Peaceworks annual Peace Fair. On the 6th at 11 a.m., visiting composer Vivian Fung will give a composition masterclass in the Rehearsal Room in Studzinski Recital Hall.

For more information, call 207-725-3895.

Copy the Story Link