10 Aug Telluride Chamber Music Festival opens 38th anniversary season
[click “Play”, Susan speaks with Roy Malan]
The Telluride Chamber Music Festival opens this week for the 38th year in a row, joining Telluride Bluegrass and the Telluride Film Festival on the list of oldies but goodies on our town’s summer cultural calendar.
The fun begins Thursday night, August 11, 5 p.m. with a FREE concert n Town Park. (Bring your own picnic.) Regular Telluride Chamber Music programming starts Friday, August 12. The two Sunday concerts, August 14 and August 21 are 2:30 matinees. Friday, August 19, is a double bill, including an 11 a.m. FREE concert for kiddos. All evening concerts begin at 7:30 p.m. The series takes place at the historic Sheridan Opera House. Tickets are $25.
The theme of the first weekend is “Exotica.” The second weekend is all about “Old Friends,” which includes perhaps the oldest friend of the Festival, co-founder (with Malan) Robin Sutherland and the very famous Dead White Guys upon whose shoulders the chamber tradition stands.
The term “chamber music” conjures a small group of people – more than one, but fewer than 15 – performing centuries-old masterworks in an intimate space without a conductor.
For aficionados, the genre is the height of cultural aspiration: emotional, intellectual, and political dramas played out in sound. For everyone else, however, “art music” is quaint or worse, dull. At least part of the problem is the name: when many people hear the word “classical,” they think “dead white men” and “not relevant.” Fans of the Telluride Chamber Music Festival know better.
Telluride Chamber Music Festival fans return year after year like moths to a flame to hear the music of their “rock stars,” composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak, and Mendelssohn, brand names in the genre. But this year, artistic director/founder, violinist Roy Malan has more than a few surprises up his sleeve. Ever heard of Karel Szymanowski or Alfred Schnittke or Hugo Wolf for that matter.? Then there is the return of San Francisco Opera soprano Erin Neff performing a program entitled “A Parisian Matinee.”
For further information, click the “play” button and listen to Roy Malan’s interview.
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