“Mini-Chamber 1: Capturing the Folk Spirit”

By Peter Alexander Oct. 19 at 3:45 p.m.

The Boulder Chamber Orchestra will present the first of four ”Mini-Chamber” concerts on their 2023–24 season schedule at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (Oct. 21, at the Boulder Adventist Church; ticket information below).

Three of the concerts—Saturday, and further performances Feb. 17 and April 6—will feature BCO’s artist-in-residence, pianist Hsing-Ay Hsu, performing chamber works with members of the orchestra. The other “Mini-Chamber” concert, Jan. 20, 2024, will feature pianist Adam Zukiewicz with members of the orchestra.

The ”Mini-Chamber” concerts are distinguished from the BCO’s other performances in that they feature pure chamber music—small, one-player-per-part ensembles—rather than the full chamber orchestra itself under director Bahmann Saless.

Saturday’s concert features three pieces with differing instrumentation. The first will be the violin-and-piano version of Bartók’s Romanian Folk Dances. A suite of six short pieces originally written for piano, based on Romanian tunes from the Transylvania—once part of Hungary and later part of Romania. Bartók himself wrote a version for small ensemble, and there have been arrangements for violin and other instruments with piano. It has been one of Bartók’s most popular pieces with performers. 

The program also includes Dvořák’s Quintet for piano and string quartet in A major. Composed in 1887, it is considered one of the leading works for Piano Quintet. It comprises four movements indulging two that are based in Eastern European folk culture: Dumka, a movement that alternates between melancholy and exuberance with a title that derives from Ukranian; and Furiant, a fiery Bohemian folk dance.

Finally, Hsu alone will pay Brahms’s Klavierstücke (Piano pieces) op. 118, a set of six pieces that Brahms dedicated to Clara Schumann, widow of the composer Robert Schumann. Composed in 1893, they were the composer’s next-to-last completed work.

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“Capturing the Folk Spirit”

Boulder Chamber Orchestra Mini-Chamber 1
Hsing-ay Hsu, piano, with members of the Boulder Chamber Orchestra

• Bartók: Romanian Folk Songs for violin and piano
• Dvořák: Quintet for piano and strings in A major
• Brahms: Klavierstücke, op. 118 no. 3

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 21
Boulder Adventist Church

TICKETS