Hub New Music, whose Gardner Museum performance of Carlos Simon’s Requiem for the Enslaved in October was a fall highlight. Clay Larsen photograph
By Keith Powers
Unable to make best-of lists this year. I only began attending concerts regularly in the fall, apart from a few assignments. But even in just a few months, there were many fine performances, and thanks to Sarah Bob, BCMS, Julie Scolnik, the Chameleons, Enigma Chamber Opera, Arpeggione Ensemble, Wendy Putnam, Hub New Music and others for that.
I’ll remain focused on chamber music at least through the end of the season, in an effort to reconnect with musicians and presenters. Leonore Overture will get redesigned, and reinvigorated, along the way. Best of holiday luck and love to everyone—here’s what coming up in the non-holiday chamber world before the end of the year.
Chamber Music Events, Dec. 15–31
Staying away from holiday performances, out of respect.
Pablo Santiago Chin presents The Electric Harpsichord, a faculty recital at Longy on the 15th.
Fermata Chamber Soloists play Respighi, Pärt and Bruch at First Church Cambridge on the 16th.
Baritone Ilya Silchukou sings songs of Belarusian composers on the 17th in Distler Performance Hall at Tufts. Cambridge’s New School of Music presents pianist/composer Anthony Coleman and violinist Gabby Fluke-Mogul on the 17th. Pianist Vladimir Rumyantsev plays a wide-ranging (lots of Russian) program on the 17th at First Church in Boston. Skylark Vocal Ensemble sings Benedict Sheehan’s A Christmas Carol in Weston (16th) and Newburyport (17th).
The Wellesley Chamber Players offer Clara Schumann romances, along with Beethoven and Brahms, on the 18th in Bardwell Auditorium at Wellesley’s Dana Hall School. The Winchendon Music Festival has four concerts, Sundays Dec. 18 through Jan. 7, featuring consecutively William Simms (theorbo), Asako Takeuchi (baroque violin), Philipp A. Stäudlin (sax) and Yoko Hagino (piano), and John Arcaro & Band.
Mezzo Renée Tatum sings Brahms, Berlioz and Wagner (Wesendonck, Parsifal), part of the Boston Wagner Society, in a free concert the afternoon of the 19th in the Boston Public Library.
Buckle up: King’s Chapel’s noontime performances of “Handel: The Half-Hour Messiah,” on the 20th; and Heinrich Christensen playing “The Nutcracker Suite” on the 27th. Seven Times Salt sings winter solstice works from late-Renaissance Europe, in two shows on the 20th at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Watertown.
Many chamber concerts to look forward to in early 023: Emerson String Quartet, on its farewell tour, in Jordan Hall on January 22nd, and the Danish String Quartet at JH on the 27th, both Celebrity Series presentations. Emerson’s farewell program: Bartok 2, Shostakovich 12, Beethoven second Razumovsky, and Walker Lyric for Strings. And for a farewell encore?