Halcyon Music Festival artistic director, pianist Heng-Jin Park. “It was really just an idea. I had no idea it would bloom like this.”Kate Lemmon photograph
In Portsmouth, NH, the Halcyon Music Festival opens tonight. Pianist Heng-Jin Park, founder and artistic director, has kept the operating philosophy simple: “Just play the best chamber music out there.”
Six concerts take place at St. John’s Episcopal Church in downtown Portsmouth, with Park’s guests including fellow members of the Boston Trio (violinist Irina Muresanu, cellist Jonah Ellsworth), HMF returnees Gabriela Díaz and Julia Glenn, and an intriguing musician that might lure Boston Symphony Orchestra fans up Route 95: newly named principal flute Lorna McGhee, who performs twice during the festival’s second weekend.
I’ll be covering Halcyon MF for Classical Voice North America, writing a post-festival look at the performances. So I’ll leave the details, and the thoughts of the artist director after more than ten years of running a festival single-handedly, for that piece.
Portsmouth is the easiest drive around, and the downtown has a welcoming feel. Repertory this summer includes quartets of Bartok, Turina, Dvorak, Schumann, Ravel and Mozart; as well as quintets by Brahms, Dvorak, and Boccherini. Concerts are available for live-streaming. Halcyon Music Festival runs June 13 through June 22.
Dover Quartet (from l): violinist Joel Link, violist Julianne Lee, cellist Camden Shaw, violinist Bryan Lee. Roy Cox photograph
Dover Quartet has taken over the Rockport Chamber Music Festival. In the same way that the Manhattan String Quartet did in the ’80s, and then Borromeo and Brentano in succeeding seasons. After multiple performances under different artistic directors in the past decade, Dover has already managed to bridge the generations of RCMF audiences.
The group performed opening weekend, first at the memorial service for RMCF co-founder Paul Sylva—a measure of the quartet’s involvement. Their main-stage performance June 9—quartets by Mozart (K. 428), Janacek (“Intimate Letters”), Shostakovich 9—showed the group’s profound investment in these three major chamber works.
Each piece—dramatic and virtuosic, deeply original compositional voices—felt lived-in. These quartets couldn’t be played so confidently, so intuitively, without having been part of the quartet’s musical household for an extended time. Great quartet playing is a blessing, and Dover performs with intention and style; it’s a pleasure to be in the same room with them.