Saturday, April 04, 2009

Russian Chamber Music at the Hillside Club

I've blogged before about the terrific chamber music series at Berkeley's Hillside Club. They've got a fabulous program tomorrow night, Sunday, April 5, at 7 p.m.

The California Chamber Players Piano Trio performs:

GEORGY L'VOVICH CATOIRE (1861-1926)
Piano Trio in F minor, Op.14 (1900)
  
IOSIF ARSHAKOVICH ANDRIASOV (1933-2000)
Piano Trio in C minor, Op.7 (1957)
 
SERGEI IVANOVICH TANEYEV (1856-1915)
Piano Trio in D Major, Op.22 (1908)

A program where I've only ever HEARD of one of the composers, which would be Taneyev.

If the name seems familiar, see the Marston Records release From the Dawn of Recording.

Not only is this a fascinating program, but the Hillside Club has great music at great prices. Full details:

Sunday, 5 April at 7:00 pm
Admission $15 ($10 for HSC members and Seniors)
The Berkeley Hillside Club
2286 Cedar Street
Berkeley 94709
Info: (510) 845-1350
 

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Victor Romasevich (violinist in that trio) has been on a mini-campaign to revive interest in Catoire; he and a quartet he's in (with my violinist pal Mike Jones), plus a guest cellist, did Catoire's String Quintet a ear or two ago at Berkeley Art Center. And Marc-André Hamelin has recorded Catoire's piano music. I have the impression a bunch of early 20th century Russians--including the composers on the trio program as well as Medtner and Liadov and no doubt others--sort of got lost; the Soviets reviled them for having fled Russia, but Western modernists weren't interested in music that still clung to tonal centers, so they just faded from memory. Rachmaninov and Scriabin escaped this fate but there's a lot of excellent music that I've only begun to discover--Medtner's piano music is gorgeous, and the Taneyev Piano Quintet is wonderful.

Lisa Hirsch said...

Thanks for that. I will try to get to this program.

I've heard a fair amount of Medtner, having written a review of a recording of a couple of his piano concertos some years ago, and heard a bunch of his solo work since then. Really good music, and technically very tough!