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Performance Oklahoma - The Brightmusic Society of Oklahoma, Part 1

Oklahoma City’s  Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble continued its Tenth Anniversary Season of chamber music concerts with a four-concert Spring Festival - "Schubert & Friends" presented on May 18th, 21st, 22nd and 23rdat St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral and All Souls Episcopal Church.  A variety of chamber works, a piano sonata  and a selection of lieder by Schubert were offered as well as the Mozart Clarinet Quintet, the Crusell Clarinet Quartet. The Weber Grand Duo Concertante and the world premier of a work for two clarinets and string quartet "Quasi un Fantasia” by Chris Theofanidis, co-commissioned by the Society and Chamber Music Northwest.  Special guests clarinetist David Shifrin and tenor Andrew Ranson joined Brightmusic musicians for the series.

Featured in the first of four programs devoted to the Society's Festival are performances of the Rondo Brillant for Violin and Piano, a selection of Lieder for Tenor and Piano and the Sonata for Viola and Piano "Arpeggione" by Franz Schubert.  The Rondo Brilliant was one of the composer's few works to be published during his lifetime.  Schubert wrote the work for violinist Josef Slavik and pianist Karl von Bocklet, who championed the composer’s music during the final years of his life.  Though highly idiomatic and elegant, the virtuosity of both players encouraged Schubert to create very demanding music offered in this performance by violinist Gregory Lee and pianist Amy I-Lin Cheng.

 
Among the first of the early Romantics, and more than any other, Franz Schubert established the German song or lied as an elevated 19th century art form inspired largely by 18th century lyric poetry. Tenor Andrew Ranson and pianist Amy I-Lin Cheng present 10 lieder (and an encore!) showing the composer's stylistic and dramatic range. 
Although it is unclear how or when he was first introduced to the arpeggione, Franz Schubert was a quick study on this new instrument, and wrote with remarkable sensitivity to its expressive speechlike quality and unique timbre, the unusual instrument (resembling a bowed and fretted six string guitar invented in Vienna the 1820s.  Violist Mark Neumann and pianist Amy I-Lin Cheng round out this all Schubert edition with their performance of the Arpeggione Sonata.  Tune in Saturday evening at 8 on Classical 88.7!