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January 16, 2025

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GRACE NOTES: Piano quintets and and a family concert

Little known Quintet by Louise Farrenc and Prokofiev’s much loved Peter and the Wolf

By Peter Alexander Jan. 16 at 12:10 a.m.

The Boulder Piano Quartet will be joined by bassist Susan Cahill, a member of the Colorado Symphony, for a program of piano quintets Friday (7 p.m. Jan. 17; details below) at the Academy, University Hill.

The concert, to be held in the Academy’s Chapel Hall, will be free. Audience members are asked to RSVP HERE prior to the concert. All the works on the program are for a quintet of piano with with one each violin, viola, cello and string bass, whereas most piano quintets are set for piano with a string quartet of two violins, viola and cello.

Louise Farrenc, portrait by Luigi Rubio (1835)

The performance will open with a quintet by Louise Farrenc, a 19th-century French composer who seems to be having a “moment” now. Though not widely known to American audiences, she has had several recent performances. Her Sextet for piano and winds was performed last Saturday (Jan. 11) on a Boulder Chamber Orchestra Mini Chamber concert, and her Third Symphony was performed in May on the Colorado Pro Musica’s farewell concert. Many of her works have recently been recorded, including music for piano, chamber music and symphonies (see listing HERE). 

A pioneer among women pianists and composers, Farrenc was a successful concert pianist. She became the first woman appointed to the permanent faculty of the Paris Conservatory in 1842, a position she held for 30 years.

The Piano Quintet in C minor by Vaughan Williams is one of his least known works, largely because the composer removed it from his catalogue of compositions after World War I, presumably because he was no longer satisfied with it. It remained unperformed for more than 80 years until the composer’s widow allowed a performance, and subsequent publication, to honor the 50th anniversary of the composer’s death.

Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet is the best known of the piano quintets with string bass. It takes its name from the fourth movement, a set of variations on the theme from Schubert’s song “Die Forelle” (The trout). The performance Friday will only feature that one movement, ending the program on a familiar and cheerful note.

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Boulder Piano Quartet
Igor Pikayzen, violin; Matthew Dane, viola; Thomas Heinrich, cello; and David Korevaar, piano|With Susan Cahill, bass

  • Louise Farrenc: Piano Quintet No. 2 in E major, op. 31|
  • Ralph Vaughan Williams: Piano Quintet in C minor
  • Schubert: Piano Quintet in A major (“Trout”): 4. Andantino

7 p.m. Friday, Jan. 17
Chapel Hall, Academy University Hill

Free: RSVP HERE

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The Longmont Symphony Orchestra will present its annual Family Concert, featuring Prokofiev’s masterful setting of the Russian folk tale Peter and the Wolf, Saturday afternoon (4 p.m. Jan. 18; details below) in Vance Brand Auditorium.

The concert will be led by the LSO music director, Elliot Moore. Cameron A. Grant will narrate. In addition to the Prokofiev score, the program features selections from The Carnival of the Animals by Saint-Saëns.

Subtitled “A symphonic tale for children,” Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf illustrates the tale of a young boy who evades the dangerous wolf, with characteristic themes for each character in the story, including Peter, his grandfather, Peter’s animal friends, the hunters and of course, the wolf. 

Prokofiev wrote an explanatory note for the score: “Each character of this tale is represented by a corresponding instrument in the orchestra: the bird by a flute, the duck by an oboe, the cat by a clarinet playing staccato in a low register, the grandfather by a bassoon, the wolf by three horns, Peter by the string quartet, the shooting of the hunters by the kettle drums and bass drum.”

Grant is a prominent attorney in Longmont, where he is a managing shareholder in the firm Lyons & Gaddis, but he is also familiar with the performing world. He holds an undergraduate degree in English and vocal music performance from Colorado College, and attended the Aspen Opera Theater Center. He has appeared with the Longmont Symphony as narrator for family concerts in the past, most recently in January, 2024.

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Family Concert: Peter and the Wolf
Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore, conductor
With Cameron A. Grant, narrator

  • Saint-Saëns: Selections from Carnival of the Animals
  • Prokofiev: Peter and the Wolf

4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 18
Vance Brand Auditorium

TICKETS

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January 16, 2024

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GRACE NOTES: Children and Chamber Music

LSO family concert, BCO mini-chamber concert Saturday

By Peter Alexander Jan. 16 at 9:35 p.m.

The Longmont Symphony Orchestra will introduce local families to musical animals including a bouncing kangaroo and a brilliant bat Saturday (4 p.m. Jan. 20) when they present the Wild Symphony by Dan Brown.

Yes, that’s the Dan Brown who wrote The da Vinci Code and other New York Times best-selling thrillers. The performance, under the direction of Elliot Moore, will feature Longmont native vocalist and attorney Cameron Grant as narrator. Wild Symphony has an accompanying children’s book, with colorful illustrations by Susan Batori.

The son of a math teacher and a church organist, Brown learned piano as a child and composed music before he wrote books. He says that he wrote the book to share his love of music with children. Each of the animals in the orchestra conducted by “Maestro Mouse” is associated with an instrument, and together they tell a story that includes portraits of the different animals and anagram puzzles on each page of the book. Among the 20 animals in the score are clumsy kittens, an anxious ostrich, dancing boars and busy beetles. 

A graduate of Niwot High School, Grant studied singing at Colorado College and sang with the Aspen Opera Theater, Colorado Symphony and Colorado Music Festival. After getting a law degree, he returned to Longmont where he practices in the field of real estate law.

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Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore conductor,
with Cameron Grant, narrator

  • Dan Brown: Wild Symphony

4 p.m. Saturday, Jan 20
Vance Brand Civic Auditorium

TICKETS

The Boulder Chamber Orchestra (BCO) will present pianist Adam Żukiewicz, associate professor of piano at the University of Northern Colorado, in the second of their Mini-Chamber concerts of the 2023–24 season.

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Titled “Adam Żukiewicz and Friends,” the concert will feature Żukiewicz playing quartets for piano and strings by Mozart and Brahms with members of the BCO, as well as Bartók’s popular Romanian Dances in their arrangement for piano and violin. The performance will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday (Jan. 20) at the Boulder Seventh-Day Adventist Church. (See below for tickets.)

Adam Żukiewicz

A native of Poland, Żukiewicz has studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, and holds a doctorate from the University of Toronto, where he also served on the faculty. He won first prize both the 2011 Canada Trust Music Competition and the 2012 Shean Piano Competition in Canada, and was a medalist at several other contests. Since 2018 he has been a judge for the Steinway Piano Competition.

Mozart’s Piano Quartet in the turbulent key of G minor, one of the earliest works for that ensemble, was commissioned by the Viennese publisher Hoffmeister for sale to amateurs. Believing the work Mozart wrote was too difficult for amateur players, Hoffmeister canceled the rest of the order. Nevertheless, Mozart wrote another piano quartet several months later. 

When Brahms wrote his Piano Quartet in G minor nearly 100 years after Mozart’s Quartet in the same key, the quartet for piano and strings was a more established genre, even if not as common as string quartets and piano trios. The quartet is best known for its rousing “Rondo alla Zingarese” (Gypsy rondo) finale.

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Boulder Chamber Orchestra Mini-chamber 2: Adam Żukiewicz and Friends
Members of the Boulder Chamber Orchestra with Adam Żukiewicz, piano

  • Mozart: Quartet in G minor for piano and strings, K478
  • Brahms: Quartet in G minor for piano and strings, op. 25
  • Bartók: Romanian Dances for piano and violin

7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 20
Boulder Adventist Church

TICKETS

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January 17, 2023

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Grace Notes: Longmont Symphony’s Family Concert

Attorney Cameron A. Grant will narrate two favorites

By Peter Alexander Jan. 17 at 3:05 p.m.

Attorney Cameron A. Grant will join the Longmont Symphony (LSO) as narrator for their annual Family Concert. The concert, conducted by Elliot Moore, will be at 4 p.m. Saturday (Jan. 21) in the Vance Brand Civic Auditorium.

The program features two works that have been favorites in past family concert performances: Selections from Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals and Lucas Richman’s Behold the Bold Umbrellephant. Both works use texts by the popular children’s author Jack Prelutsky, the first-ever U.S. Children’s Poet Laureate who personally read his poems when the LSO performed both works in 2018.

Cameron A. Grant

Prelutsky’s book Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant is a set of poems about fanciful creatures that are part animals and part inanimate objects, such as the umbrellaphant, the panthermometer and the clocktopus. Richman’s music takes eager advantage of all the musical hints in the poems. Every piece has its own character, across a wide variety of styles and musical types. The Umbrellaphant features horn calls that recall elephants’ trumpeting, while the Panthermometer is a cool cat who can tell you the temperature.

With it’s musical portraits of lions, donkeys, fossils and swans, Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals is widely performed today, but it was unknown during the composer’s lifetime. Saint-Saëns had prohibited public performances, thinking that such frivolous music would damage his reputation. It was not published until 1922, the year after the composer’s death, and it has been one of his best known and most popular works since.

The American humorous poet Ogden Nash had written a set of poems to accompany The Carnival of the Animals in the 1940s, but Prelutsky’s publisher, considering Nash’s poems to be outdated, wanted new texts. He called Prelutsky and asked him to write poems to go along with Saint-Saëns’ music. Originally reluctant, Prelutsky quickly turned out a new set of poems.

Grant is a prominent attorney in Longmont, where he is a managing shareholder in the firm Lyons & Gaddis, but he is also familiar with the performing world. He holds an undergraduate degree in English and vocal music performance from Colorado College, and attended the Aspen Opera Theater Center. He has been an active member of the local community, including a spell as president of the Longmont Council for the Arts.

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Family Concert
Longmont Symphony Orchestra, Elliot Moore, conductor
With Cameron A. Grant, narrator

  • Saint-Saéns: Selections from Carnival of the Animals
  • Lucas Richman: Behold the Bold Umbrellaphant

4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21
Vance Brand Civic auditorium

TICKETS