CMS Offers Weekly, Themed Playlists Plus Online Learning

As concert halls over the world are shut down, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) is committed to bringing great chamber music to audiences all over the globe. For the next eight weeks, while concerts are cancelled in New York in accordance with the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), CMS will help create a community of music organizations worldwide who are lifting the spirits of humanity when all around seems challenging. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, "When I hear music, I do not feel danger."

• From the Archives: Every day at 12:30 PM chamber music concerts and events, drawn from the 1,000+ works in the CMS archive, will be released on the CMS website (https://chambermusicsociety.org) Performances, lectures, and family programs will be included. A different theme each week will guide listeners through some of the masterworks of the chamber music repertoire. The theme of the first week's playlist, to be announced on March 17, is Transcendence. Listeners are invited to explore how music expands one's sense of time, evokes the imagination, and brings us to an elevated sense of existence. One example is Mendelssohn's Piano Trio No. 2 in C minor, performed by CMS Co-Artistic Directors cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han along with violinist Arnaud Sussmann, is a work of great drama and lyricism. Another example, Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time, was written in a prisoner of war camp during World War II, exemplifying how great beauty could be born out of horrific circumstances. And as a celebration of Beethoven's 250th year, lectures by David Finckel on the complete cycle of Beethoven's string quartets will also be available. There will be supplemental articles, interviews with artists, and lectures accompanying each playlist to enhance one's listening.

• Online Learning resources to assist teachers with online curriculum development and provide students of all ages with the opportunity to learn about the rich history of chamber music making through CMS concerts, lectures, and family programming in the CMS archive .Video content will be supplemented by suggestions for online assignments and activities developed in consultations with

partnering schools. This resource will be freely available via the CMS website to teachers and students around the globe.

• Meet the Music! Inspector Pulse Pops a String, a family program designed for children 6 through 12, will be streamed on Sunday, April 5, at 2:00 PM, EST. Inspector Pulse, the greatest and only private ear in the world, will show how so much music can be made with just stretched strings and the help of the Amphion String Quartet. (This program was originally performed in March 2015.) In addition to the streaming it will also be available from the online education resources pages on the CMS website.

These new initiatives join with the following efforts that CMS already has in place to bring chamber music to an ever-widening audience, and all for free:

• Hosted by Elliott Forrest and with commentary by CMS Co-Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han, the CMS National Radio Series features 52 one-hour programs, new every Wednesday, drawn from CMS's live performances. The CMS Radio Series is syndicated nationally by WFMT Radio Network and it reaches more than 8 million listeners on more than sixty commercial and non-commercial stations across the U.S. (In the New York City metro area it is carried on WQXR-FM on Saturday evenings at 10 PM.) New episodes are available for streaming on the CMS website https://chambermusicsociety.org/watch-and-listen/national-radio-series-2019-20

• Phenomenal 50 podcast: In celebration of CMS's 50th Anniversary season, CMS is providing 50 free podcasts of some of the finest performances from the past 50 years, each with an introduction by David Finckel. Each new podcast comes out on Mondays throughout the current season. https://chambermusicsociety.org/about/50

CMS's resident lecturer, Bruce Adolphe, offers investigations and insights into chamber music milestones in the Inside Chamber Music podcast. Selections from the Inside Chamber Music archive are available bi-weekly, and they are available on iTunes, Google Play, and www.chambermusicsociety.org.

In accordance with the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), CMS has cancelled the remainder of its live concerts in NYC through May 10, 2020.

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