The Mt. Desert Festival of Chamber Music is proud to announce its historic 50th anniversary season of summer concerts at the Neighborhood House in Northeast Harbor, Maine. Among the performers will be four award-winning string quartets, all familiar to festival audiences. The following are some highlights of the season:
The Borromeo String Quartet opens the series on July 23rd with a program of two beloved masterworks of the chamber music repertoire: Beethoven's C major "Razumovsky" Quartet, Op. 59, No. 3, and Brahms's Piano Quintet with pianist/music director Todd Crow. On July 30th, the Shanghai Quartet performs the rarely heard quartet by Giuseppe Verdi.
The August 6th program will feature the return of the soprano Dominique Labelle performing Schubert's "Shepherd on the Rock" and guest artists violinist Stephanie Chase, violist Dov Scheindlin, cellist Mark Shuman, bassist David Grossman, clarinetist Jo-Ann Sternberg, bassoonist Mark Timmerman, and hornist Patrick Pridemore in Beethoven's grand Septet for strings and winds.
The Miami String Quartet returns on August 13th to perform Mozart and Mendelssohn. The season ends August 20th with the Brentano String Quartet and guest artists Movses Pogossian and Varty Manouelian, violins, Dov Scheindlin, viola, and Wilhelmina Smith, cello, in a program that closes with Mendelssohn's brilliant Octet for Strings.
Other composers to be heard this summer are Haydn, Schumann, Debussy and Dohnányi.
The festival aims to present chamber music at its best in an intimate setting. Much of the aura, which is both informal and serious, is due to the ambiance of the Neighborhood House, whose fine acoustics and old world charm add much to the intimacy of communication upon which chamber music thrives.