The Escher String Quartet will perform works by Mozart, Dvorák and Erich Wolfgang Korngold on June 1 at Bard’s Olin Hall.
This June, the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle (HVCMC) series at Bard College celebrates its 69th season with three concerts of literal world-class chamber music. On June 1, the famous Escher String Quartet will begin the season. Best-known for their definitive readings of Mendelssohn and for recording the complete string quartets of the oft-overlooked Austrian master Alexander Zemlinksy, the Escher will perform works by Mozart, Dvorák and Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the 20th-century Austrian film and concert music composer who is the subject of Bard’s SummerScape 2019.
On Saturday, June 22, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio premieres the living American composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Pas de Trois (co-commissioned by HVCMC) and performs Six Études in Canonic Form, Op. 56 by Robert Schumann and Ravel’s famous Piano Trio in A Minor. Since making their debut at the White House for President Carter’s inauguration in January 1977, pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jaime Laredo and cellist Sharon Robinson have set the standard for performance of the piano trio literature.
Finally, on Saturday, June 29 the Orion String Quartet, joined by flutist Tara Helen O’Connor, performs Mozart’s Flute Quartet, Fritz Kreisler’s String Quartet in A Minor and Schubert’s devastating String Quartet No. 14 (“Death and the Maiden”). The Orion Quartet is one of the leading chamber music ensembles on the classical music scene today. Its players are artist members of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and it is the quartet-in-residence at the Mannes School of Music in New York.
A subscription to the three-concert series costs $70. Individual tickets cost $30, $5 for students.
Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle series, June 1, 22, 29, 8 p.m., Olin Hall, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, (845) 758-7900, http://fishercenter.bard.edu.