Rembrandt Chamber Musicians Reveal 2023–2024 Concert Season Programs in Evanston and Chicago

Rembrandt Chamber Musicians, Chicago's flagship ensemble covering the full spectrum of classical chamber music, has announced its 34th concert season, 2023-2024, comprising five programs to be performed at venues in Chicago and Evanston, Illinois.

Now in his third season artistic director, violinist John Macfarlane says Rembrandt remains true to its roots as "an adventurous group of friends coming together to play beautiful music, including unheralded and neglected repertoire along with the true masterpieces of the canon."

Each program, he says, is designed "to keep listeners intellectually and emotionally engaged from the first note to the last. There's a through-line, a narrative thread that connects compositions and takes the audience on a communal journey."

Ensemble members are Macfarlane, assistant principal second violin of the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra; Carol Cook, principal viola of the Lyric Opera Orchestra; and Calum Cook, principal cello of the Lyric Opera Orchestra. All three perform in every concert, with guest artists from near and far.

'An die Musik' is October's season opener

"An die Musik" (To Music), Rembrandt Chamber Musicians' season-opener concert, takes its name from one of the works on the program: Franz Schubert's famous song of praise to the musical arts, "An die Musik," D. 547.

"The concert celebrates the enchanting power of music and, in the words of Schubert's song, its ability to kindle 'warm love' in one's heart and to transport listeners 'to a better world,'" Macfarlane says.

The concert opens with another beloved Schubert piece for voice and piano, "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" (The Shepherd on the Rock), D. 965. This is its first Rembrandt performance.

Three selections from Max Bruch's "Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano, Op. 83, bring a change of musical texture. Each selection is a quintessentially Romantic character piece meant to evoke a different mood. One is based on a Rumanian folk song. Bruch wrote the set for his son, an accomplished clarinetist.

The concert closes with Schubert's large-scale Trio in B-flat Major for Violin, Cello, and Piano, D. 898, a towering work that's charming, tuneful, and sometimes humorous. "One glance at Schubert's Trio," composer Robert Schumann wrote, "and the troubles of our human existence disappear, and all the world is fresh and bright again."

Guest artists are Jennifer Haworth, soprano; Jonathan Gunn, clarinet; and Henry Kramer, piano.

Haworth, who is making her Rembrandt debut, sings as a soloist and ensemble member with a variety of esteemed Chicago groups, including Schola Antiqua and the Saint Cecilia Choir of Saint John Cantius Parish, where she has performed and recorded numerous sacred works. Chicago Classical Review applauded "her pure, luminous soprano soaring to stratospheric regions seemingly without effort."

Gunn is associate professor of clarinet at the University of Texas's Butler School of Music. He is former principal clarinet of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and has performed as guest principal clarinet with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Houston Grand Opera.

Kramer has won top prizes at several major international piano competitions and received an Avery Fisher Career Grant from New York's Lincoln Center.

"An die Musik" is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. Tuesday, October 10, 2023, at The Cliff Dwellers, 200 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago; and 7:00 p.m. Wednesday, October 11, 2023, at Nichols Concert Hall, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston.

December's 'Holiday Baroque' accented by soprano, trumpet, and lute

Rembrandt's 2023 Holiday Baroque program opens with a shimmering showpiece for soprano and trumpet: George Frideric Handel's aria "Let the Bright Seraphim" in D Major from his oratorio "Samson," HWV 57.

Antonio Vivaldi's charming Trio Sonata RV 28 for lute, violin, and continuo engages the listener with its carefree opening movement, followed by a serene middle featuring the lute, and a dance-like finale.

Handel's Gloria in B-flat, another soprano showpiece, is unusual for being a stand-alone section of the Mass and scored for a solo voice.

A contemporary of Vivaldi, Venetian musician Alessandro Marcello is best known for his Oboe Concerto in D Minor, which will be heard in an arrangement for piccolo.

English composer William Corbett's Sonata No. 5 in E Major features the trumpet. Grove Music Online describes Corbett's music as "characterized by an attractive turn of phrase, a melodic spontaneity and a strong rhythmic sense."

Flute and violin share top billing in J. S. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major, BWV 1050, noted for its groundbreaking harpsichord solo.

Guest artists are Josefien Stoppelenburg; soprano; Jennifer Gunn, flute and piccolo; Ryan Berndt, trumpet; Brandon Acker, archlute; Stephen Alltop, harpsichord; Eoin Andersen, violin; and Ian Hallas, double bass.

Stoppelenburg is an internationally acclaimed Baroque music specialist. Gunn plays flute and piccolo with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Berndt has been hailed by Gramophone magazine as a "versatile, superb, and committed" artist.

Acker, a specialist in historical plucked instruments, was Musical America's Young Artist of the Month for March 2023. Alltop has performed with many of today's leading early-music proponents and conducts the Baroque Music Ensemble at Northwestern University's Bienen School of Music. Andersen is former concertmaster of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. Hallas is principal bass with the Chicago Lyric Opera Orchestra.

Concerts are at 8:00 p.m. Friday December 1, 2023, at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, 201 S Ashland Avenue, Chicago; and 3:00 p.m. Sunday, December 3, 2023, at Northwestern University's Alice Millar Chapel, 1870 Sheridan Road, Evanston.

'Viola! Viola!' features 'curiously beautiful' instrument

A "curiously beautiful, enigmatic instrument" is how one contemporary viola virtuoso has described the earthy, chocolatey tone of the alto voice of string instruments.

The viola, with its remarkable pitch, plays a starring rather than supporting role in this program.

Antonin Dvořák, a violist himself, scored his Terzetto in C Major, Op. 74, for the unusual combination of two violins and viola. "This work gives me as much pleasure as if I were composing a great symphony," he wrote to his German publisher.

Frank Bridge, also a violist, knew the instrument inside-out, as demonstrated in his warmly Romantic "Lament for Two Violas," with its haunting dialogue between soloists.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart loved playing viola with this chamber-music colleagues. His Viola Quintet in G Minor, K. 516, adds an additional viola to the string quartet format. The dark, stormy piece ends in a starkly contrasting, unexpectedly upbeat mood.

Violists are ensemble member Carol Cook and guest artist Rose Armbrust-Griffin.

Born in Scotland, Cook has performed as soloist with the Edinburgh Symphony, Edinburgh Players, Chicago Philharmonic, Boston's Metamorphosen Chamber Orchestra, and England's Guildhall Symphony and Cambridge Sinfonia. She performed the Brahms Double Concerto alongside her cellist brother (and fellow Rembrandt member) Calum with the Edinburgh Symphony and the Grampian Orchestra.

She was appointed principal violist with Chicago's Lyric Opera Orchestra in 2013, having been a member since 2003. She has also appeared as guest principal violist with the Australian Chamber Orchestra with whom she has toured throughout Australia, New Zealand, and the US. She performs regularly with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and has also appeared with the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony Orchestra.

Cook is a former member of the Appalachia Waltz Trio with Grammy Award-winning violinist Mark O'Connor. The trio toured extensively throughout the US. and released its folk-infused debut album "Crossing Bridges" to critical acclaim in 2004.

Griffin, is a first-prize winner in the Chicago Viola Society and Rembrandt Chamber Musicians Competitions and a prizewinner at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition. She is an alum of The Juilliard School, Curtis Institute of Music, and Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music.

The program will be heard 7:00 p.m. Sunday, January 28, 2024, at Nichols Concert Hall, Evanston; and 7:00 p.m. Monday, January 29, 2024, at the Epiphany Center for the Arts, Chicago.

'Icons Under Scrutiny' spotlights sonatas by composers who aroused suspicion

Ensconced in the pantheon of 20th-century composers, America's Aaron Copland, England's Benjamin Britten, and Russia's Dmitri Shostakovich have each come to symbolize his respective country's quintessential "national" sound. Each went on to receive high honors in his homeland.

Ironically, all of them had come under suspicion by their governments, with Shostakovich, at times, fearing for his life. Copland was grilled by a Congressional committee for suspected Communist sympathies. Britten aroused disapproval for his uncompromising pacifism during World War II (and his sexual orientation). Shostakovich was denounced by dictator Joseph Stalin's cultural commissars for not sufficiently glorifying the Soviet Union in his music.

The program offers a sonata by each, with violin, cello, and viola taking featured turns.

"It's an opportunity to hear intimate music by a trio of celebrity composers who are best known for their larger-scale works," Rembrandt's Macfarlane says.

Written during World War II, Copland's Sonata for Violin and Piano connects his signature, "Appalachian Spring"-style Americana with modernist dissonance. Composer and critic Virgil Thompson called the Sonata "one of the author's most satisfying pieces. It has a quality at once of calm elevation and of buoyancy that is characteristic of Copland and irresistibly touching."

Britten wrote his Sonata for Cello and Piano in C Major, Op. 65, for Russian virtuoso Mstislav Rostropovich, whose astonishing technique sparked his interest in cello writing. Though not a cellist himself, Britten's writing is ingeniously suited to the instrument. The composer and cellist became friends and often performed together, with Britten at the piano. This Anglo-Soviet partnership, in the darkest days of the Cold War, was a rare East-West collaboration.

One of the most significant works in the viola repertoire, Shostakovich's austere and profound Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op.147, was composed in 1975 during the final weeks of his life. He described its three movements to the violist to whom he dedicated it: "The first is a novella, the second a scherzo, and the finale is an Adagio in memory of Beethoven." Each movement ends with the instruction "morendo," meaning "dying away."

Guest artist is Jessica Choe, an award-winning pianist whose chamber music collaborators have included classical headliners Avi Avital and Marc-Andre Hamelin.

The concert will include a performance by winners of Rembrandt's 2024 High School Chamber Music Competition for young chamber ensembles. The 29th annual competition for area high-school-age chamber groups will be held in February, date and location to be announced. Ensembles compete for cash prizes, professional coaching, and performance opportunities. Winners join the honor roll of Rembrandt Young Artists.

"Icons Under Scrutiny"' will be performed at 7:00 p.m. Friday, March 1, 2024, at The Cliff Dwellers, Chicago; and 7:00 p.m. Sunday, March 3, 2024, at Nichols Concert Hall, Evanston.

'Wayfarer's Melodies: A Musical Journey' is season's last port of call

"Wayfarer's Melodies," Rembrandt's season-finale program, offers an immersive experience in German Romanticism that includes a rarely heard song cycle by "English Impressionist" John Ireland, whose works have a stylistic connection to the late 19th century.

The richly melodious English horn assumes the singer's role in Cliff Colnot and Stefan Hersh's 2021 string quartet arrangement of Gustav Mahler's song cycle for voice and piano "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (Songs of a Wayfarer). Mahler, then 24 years old, wrote the music and texts amid his despair over a failed romance with an opera singer. In the song cycle, the young protagonist seeks to sort out his life after a shattered love affair, ultimately finding a measure of peace and acceptance. Mahler uses progressive tonality - each song begins and ends in a different key - to impart a sense of forward momentum to the journey.

Ireland's early cycle "Songs of a Wayfarer" for baritone and piano comprises setting of texts by William Blake, William Shakespeare, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Ernst Christopher Dowson, and James Vila Blake. England's Hi-Fi News magazine praised the cycle as "rewarding and rapt repertoire" and hailed the literature-loving Ireland as "a songsmith to rival he finest this country has produced."

During an intense exploration of chamber music, Robert Schumann found his way to inventing a new genre: the piano quintet consisting of piano and string quartet. Considered one of Schumann's loftiest achievements, his Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44, the first of its kind, displays a wondrous range of moods and colors. It was an immediate success. One of its biggest cheerleaders was Hector Berlioz.

Guest artists are Damien Geter, baritone; Scott Hostetler, English horn; Eoin Andersen, violin; and Marta Aznavoorian, piano.

Opera Today praised Geter's bass-baritone sound palette as very much his own distinct voice, and invigoratingly fresh," while the News Tribune called him "superb."

Hostetler is the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's English horn, appointed to that position in 2008 by principal conductor Bernard Haitink.

Aznavoorian is an international concert and recording artist with the Billboard-charting Lincoln Trio and Aznavoorian Duo.

Tickets and Information

General admission tickets are $36. Starting this season, student admission is free at Evanston concerts and $10 at Chicago venues, with ID. Also new are discounted FlexPass subscriptions of three, four, or five tickets that allow admission to any combination of concerts for $95, $125, and $153, respectively.

Tickets and subscriptions can be purchased online at rembrandtchambermusicians.org or by phone at 872-395-1754.

Evanston concerts include a complimentary ENCORE! wine reception with the musicians. Performances at Chicago venues include a post-concert cash bar and complimentary snacks.

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