In a recent PMP magazine feature, Kyle described her work:

Sometimes the starting point of a piece is a particular sound-texture or a melody; sometimes it’s a story. Sometimes it’s a poem or a picture.  Sometimes it is a case of finding the right metaphor for something (a feeling? an idea?) that escapes direct analysis. This time I just felt a sense of movement, free movement, movement impeded by obstacles, movement that travels long distances, and movement that stands in place…

Read Kyle’s full “Sound Diary” on the Philadelphia Music Project’s blog.

Burwasser put it nicely:

On the surface, the decision to present this music seemed daring, but the utter joy and excitement of the audience upon hearing it made it look like an easy choice. It certainly did not seem to faze the performers, who offered fearless and affectionate playing, not least the conductor, Leon Fleisher, one of the great men of contemporary American music, and at the age of 81, as eager for adventure as any college kid.

Concerts like this don’t get presented often enough, that’s for sure.  In this case we can thank a wonderful group of foundation and individual supporters who helped make possible some eleven concerts of rarely heard masterworks: the Philadelphia Music Project and the Presser Foundation deserve our special thanks.

In the four years since its inception, the Philadelphia Fans of Classical Music has grown to 187 members from the Greater Philadelphia region including two dedicated individuals from Baltimore. The Fans meet monthly—or more often—in members’ homes to discuss some of the works or composers in upcoming concerts or to share  a favorite CD with the group and to select  which concerts to attend in the coming months. The group often gets together after the concerts for coffee and conversation.

If you’re interested in classical music, the Philadelphia Fans of Classical Music would like you to check out their Meetup.  Don’t worry; you don’t have to be a musician or a musicologist or know how to read music to join this group.  One of the members describes it as “a friendly and varied group of people of different ages and backgrounds—musically, socially and ethnically.   A very nice mix.”  I can attest to that; I meet them at our concerts.

Come October, there is an mix of excitement and anticipation in the air at 1616 Walnut Street, something akin to the pause just before running a marathon.  Watching the Phillies beat the Dodgers last night at Jose Pistola’s around the corner from the Kimmel Center with Miles, Brian, Brad, Sacha, and Jen (after a stunning performance by the always-sparkling Emerson Quartet), the annual shift in attitude was particularly pronounced.

What are we so excited about (besides the Phillies)?  Over the next 7 months, PCMS will present 65 concerts attended by nearly 25,000 people and facilitate some 50 educational outreach concerts, lectures, and master classes impacting thousands of young people in our region.

At the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society (PCMS), our mission rings clear.  We believe that people from all walks of life should have access to the best classical music experiences that the world has to offer.

How can we guarantee this experience for you?  By providing a unique, affordable ticket policy:  $23 or less per ticket.

Join the PCMS family as we enter another exciting new season.  We look forward to seeing you at a concert soon!

Like most purveyors of “serious” culture, we often pine after the young people who support Philly’s beer bars (Local 44, Sidecar, and SPTR we’re talking about you!), online sites like Facebook and Twitter, and the dozens of cafes in each neighborhood but who find themselves in a concert hall only once in a blue moon – if ever.

Well, in the next few weeks we’re launching a few programs aimed at engaging Philadelphia’s unparalleled group of young urbanites and university students.  We have two things coming:

• PCMS Young Friends – this is not your traditional “young friends” program, but we honestly couldn’t think of a better name, so it stuck.  If you’re under 35, you’re in luck at PCMS:  not only do you get the chance to win a Flip Camera every month throughout the 09/10 Season, you also get access to last-minute FREE tickets when available, and your own special pickup table at all PCMS concerts.  Not bad, right?
• As usual, if you’re a student under 35, things get even better: show us your student I.D. and we’ll happily hand you an unlimited pass to all PCMS concerts (65 of them this season) for only $30.  Just reserve your real ticket in advance via email, Twitter, Facebook or even telephone (you can have front row seats if they’re open, we won’t push you to the back of the hall!).  That beats $10 tickets any day, so tell your friends!

We’re looking forward to a busy September and an incredible 09/10 Season.  Help us out by sharing word of these new programs with your friends, family, and colleagues!  Contact me with any questions about our programs, or about how you can help support PCMS’ mission of affordable, accessible, and world-class music in Philadelphia.

Among the many developments in the Box Office this summer, we’ve unveiled a new Young Friends program that we’re really excited about, and we were thrilled to add Thomas Hampson’s recital to our already full fall schedule.  This special evening with America’s top baritone has quickly become a hot ticket (tip for blog readers:  as of this posting, only about 50 remain), so if you are a vocal enthusiast or a fan of American song, I recommend reserving your seats today.

Summer at PCMS is about more than selling tickets, though.  Here are a few personal highlights from our busy summer.

• Bradford spent a week in Canada in July, fly fishing, visiting family and otherwise exploring New Brunswick and the coast of Maine.  Earlier in June I got married in northern Vermont and honeymooned in Montreal.  Pictures upon request!
• In August Bradford, our head usher Guy, my wife Jamie and I took a road trip up to the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont, and man, was it great.  It was my first visit to Marlboro, and I was just blown away by the beautiful setting, the atmosphere, and of course, the music making.  We spent our mornings at swimming holes and farmers’ markets, listened in on some afternoon rehearsals, and were treated to brilliant music-making each evening in the concert hall.  Of the many memorable performances, I particularly enjoyed the baritone John Moore’s rendition of Dover Beach – hopefully we’ll get John to Philadelphia soon – and Marina Piccinini, Susan Babini and Amy Yang’s performance of George Crumb’s otherworldly Vox Balaenae.  With masked musicians, a blue-lit stage and a panoply of unusual sounds emanating from the flute, Crumb’s composition is at once avant-garde, sensory and strangely musical.  If your tastes run towards the adventurous, I recommend giving this piece a listen when Dolce Suono performs it in January as part of their program at the American Philosophical Society.
• I’m also happy to announce that as of September 1, I will be working in the office full-time, selling tickets, doing writing and design work, jump-starting our new Young Friends program and more.

Please stop in, say hello and tell us about your summer!

While I don’t like to bring politics into our Society, it’s important to let you know that without new action, both the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts (PCA) and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund (PCF) will have zero funding allocated for the upcoming year.  That’s right: zero dollars for Arts and Culture at both the city and the state level.

PCMS, like cultural presenters nationwide, depend on grants and donations to supplement ticket sale income.   The PCA has been a consistent supporter since our founding in 1986, and the Philadelphia Cultural Fund has recently increased its support – both of these factors make it difficult to visualize a season without their important support.

If you care about the arts in our City and State as much as I do, please take a moment to contact your representatives and stress to them the importance of this funding.  Without action in the coming week or two, both sources of funding will be lost for the entire upcoming year.

Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s Take Action Resource Page

McGill performed on our series last season and will be back during 2009/2010.  We’re looking forward to it!

Performance on YouTube from the Obama Inauguration

Profile article in the NYTimes

All of us at PCMS went into the holiday break on a real “high” – very excited for the start of the 2009 Season.   Not to disappoint, pianist Vladimir Feltsman kicked off January with a superb recital. Not only was the concert sold-out but the audience was attentive and engaged, concluding with a rare performance (on our series) of Schumann’s Carnaval.

What many in the audience were unaware of – was that all day and night Mr. Feltsman had been battling sever back pain. So bad that I was not sure the concert would continue after the first half. However, despite Mr. Feltsman’s struggles to stand, he summoned all his strength and went back out on stage. 

Earlier in the day I asked Mr. Feltsman if he could explain why he thought his performance of Schumann’s Carnaval was only the third time in 23 seasons that PCMS an artist perform this incredible piece – especially when all of the other large Schumann works (Fantasy in C Major, Kreisleriana, Davidsbündlertänze) had been performed at least twice as often. Mr. Feltsman shook his head a bit and explained how Carnaval used to be a very popular piece but may have fallen out of favor in modern times – possibly seen as a less mature work than his other larger-scale pieces. 

Backstage, after the concert, Mr. Feltsman took a deep breath and exhaled a sigh of relief – very happy to be back in Philadelphia in a hall he is quite fond of and with an audience with whom he feels a deep connection.

At a meeting last year, one of our PCMS directors said, “I would love to be able to buy PCMS tickets for some students I know, but to allow them to attend whatever concerts they want, whatever fits into their schedules.”

That seemed like a good idea to all of us, but there was just no easy way to provide this. Well, now there is! This season, we launched the new “PCMS Concert Card,” with 3-concert and 5-concert options. This simple plastic card (pictured on our home page) provides many options—the kind of flexibility that students, young adults and busy professionals need.

Each card is individually numbered. When you buy a card for a relative or friend, they simply call our box office, give us the card number, and tell us which concerts they want to attend. They can enjoy any of this season’s performances (which are not yet sold-out).

A 3-concert card allows them to receive three tickets for one performance, OR one ticket to any three concerts. If they would like to buy additional tickets, our box office staff will make sure the seats are together.

We hope you’ll try this out. It makes for a wonderful gift, a great introduction to PCMS, or—as our director suggested—a wonderful way to bring exciting music into the lives of young people (and a nice break from their studies!).

Our regular 3-concert card costs just $75, and a 5-concert card costs $125. To purchase a card, use the order form here on our website or call us at 215-569-8080. If you wish to buy these for students, the prices are just $24 (3-concert card) and $40 (5-concert card) – please call us for this option.

As always, many thanks for your interest and support!

The Quartet will end its 45-year run after that May concert, one in which founding cellist David Soyer, now 85, will rejoin the ensemble in a symbolic farewell, Schubert’s Quintet in C, featuring the only five members who have shaped the ensemble..

A PCMS season without the Guarneri is all but impossible to imagine, for the ensemble played in the series’ opening in 1986, and more than 30 times since then. Its repertoire has embraced Beethoven, Dvorak and Schubert, Lutoslawski, Bartok and Berg.  With guest artists, its reach has extended even farther.

Any future without the Guarneri is equally impossible to picture. This is the seminal American quartet, not the oldest, but the one that helped to change the ambitions of a generation of string players, expanded horizons in conservatories and refigured the listening habits of the country.  Before the four players joined hands in 1964 and committed to a life as quartet members, chamber music in America was almost a private matter. True, the Juilliard Quartet, at home in New York City, played mainly in university series; the Budapest Quartet was moving into its final years; the LaSalle Quartet made Cincinnati a place to study for European quartets.

In the 1960’s, conservatory students learned the big concertos and set off to play in major halls as soloists or orchestral players. Once settled, they sometimes played chamber music. Philadelphians with long memories recall that chamber music was proscribed for Philadelphia Orchestra members in the same year the Guarneri was founded. Small ensembles diverted orchestra musicians’ attention from their true profession for which they were being paid year-round.

And, Philadelphia played its role in the Quartet’s founding – rather like the nation’s. Three of the four players had studied at the Curtis Institute; all attended the summer festival at Marlboro, Vermont, where Rudolf Serkin, Adolf Busch, Felix Galimir, Marcel Moyse and Pablo Casals combined to bring the largely European tradition of chamber music into the center of a generation of American instrumentalists’ consciousness.

At Curtis, director Efrem Zimbalist, part of the tidal wave of Russian and Ukrainian violinists who defined the instrument at the time, said chamber music was something you did in retirement, and implied that great violinists played concertos; the lesser talents?  Maybe chamber music.

But in this antagonistic atmosphere, violinists Arnold Steinhardt, John Dalley and Michael Tree, and cellist David Soyer declared their dream achievable and plunged in. Quartet life is often and sometimes tiresomely compared with marriage, but like marriage nobody knows for sure how it works until you do it. Their first hurdle was in deciding who would play viola and how the violinists would sit.

These players had to learn how to balance profession with home life, how to mediate differences in the tight and sometimes explosive world of intimate music making.  They needed to find managerial support to convince concert promoters that a quartet could actually find an audience. And they had to support themselves, wives and families.

They were lucky early on to find a berth at Harpur College in Binghamton. There they had practice space and a schedule that encouraged their own development through discoveries while planning repertoire and touring schedules.  Soon, the ensemble was on its own, a true American quartet playing for audiences just getting used to the idea that quartet repertoire may be the most sublime in the Western heritage.

Their very existence caught the fancy of the media. This must be the most documented quartet in history. Films, interviews, books, TV documentaries traced their growth, revealed bits of their lives inside and outside the quartet, showed squabbles in rehearsal and on planes. The Guarneri seemed larger than life, but wondrously accessible, quixotic, even lovable.

Not beginning with a firm image of themselves, the Quartet defined itself as it went along. Fired with the love of the core repertoire, the players took on Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart, Brahms, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Haydn.  Where European quartets could bring repertoire from their own countries, the very American Guarneri had to show themselves musical polyglots, capable of enunciating Ravel and Debussy, Shostakovich, Arriaga and Britten with the same aplomb as native speakers.

Other fledgling ensembles – crowding down the road cut by the Guarneri – called them the “imperial” quartet, explorers of what everyone knew as the great masterpieces. Yet those critics forgot that the Guarneri was among the first to record all six Bartok quartets, music that had seemed thorny and impenetrable only a few years before the Guarneri recorded.

The Guarneri has had a special gift for the big pieces. They have won recording honors for the three Beethoven Op. 59, and all the other Beethoven quartets, plus Mozart, Schubert and Dvorak works.  Their approach has always been exploratory rather than didactic. Listeners have come away from concerts wondering if they had heard right. Was that the Op. 132 we remembered from only three years ago?

The answer was “no,” for the classics were always under re-examination, tempos adjusted or junked, details re-imagined. Intriguingly, the new works – by Bolcom, Rorem, Derek Bermel, among others, in first performance – seemed settled, authoritative and even final.

So much a timeless part of the musical scene, signs of change were hard to digest. When founding cellist David Soyer left, it sent a shudder through the chamber music world.  The Amadeus Quartet in England had stopped playing after the death of their violist. The Guarneri suddenly seemed finite and mortal.  Yet the ensemble found Peter Wiley, who had been a student of Soyer’s and who knew the other players well – and musically well.

The decision to stop playing after this season cannot have been easy, yet the tradition of quartet has to be recognized.  Orchestras can annually regenerate themselves and play for decades and decades. A quartet is much more personal. It is the sum of the four players’ thinking, musical beliefs and backgrounds. Personnel changes may add to longevity (a managerial function), but take away from personality (the founding musical urge).

The players have been notably withheld about their thoughts on ending such an emblazoning career.  Learning how to stop may be as difficult as it was learning how to start on an unmapped route.  For listeners, the Guarneri’s work remains on recordings. For quartet members, their work stands in the newspapers, where concerts by string quartets directly descended from their decision – 45 years ago – are scheduled everywhere. What courage! What standards! What a gift to music!  What a gift to us!

The Philadelphia Chamber Music Society expresses its thanks and appreciation to Daniel Webster for this special tribute.

Important services (and ones rarely taken advantage of by our patrons) include our “ticket upgrade” and “ticket waiting” lists. A surprising number of tickets are returned for one reason or another (illness, bad weather, etc.) in the few days or hours leading up to any given concert (even the most popular ones!), and this sometimes allows us to improve your seating or find you a ticket that was not available earlier. If you yourself need to return a ticket, we ask that you try to call by noon of the day of the actual concert. This gives us a reasonable chance of reselling it. Having said this, some patrons still drop off tickets they can’t use at the desk before the concert. If you are not completely happy with your seat it never hurts to ask at the desk for an upgrade before you go in.

In future blogs I’d like to discuss the merits of our different venues and the specific seats within those halls. The staff has had a lot of experience with seat locations and we would love to share our views on acoustics, sight lines, comfort, etc. with you. There are often different things to consider depending on the type of concert you choose to attend (piano recitals vs. quartets, etc.). In the meantime, if you are uncertain as to where you are sitting or just want to talk about possible seat changes, please feel free to call. We are aware that sometimes having the perfect seat can make the difference between a good concert and a great one.

A few other notes:

• It is always good to keep in mind that we open the doors into our “general admission” concerts (Philosophical Society, Art Museum, Settlement, St. Marks, Gershman Hall, Fleisher, Curtis) 30 minutes before the concert. If you arrive at that time you will have your choice of seat locations.
• I would also like to encourage everyone to try sitting in the balconies of our different venues (Perelman Theater, Seaport Museum, Philosophical Society, Gershman Hall). I’ve always felt that both the sound and the sight lines are best there and often go unconsidered.
• It also helps us very much if when ordering tickets on-line you can give us a clear idea of what you would consider ideal seats (please use the “notes” section). Unfortunately, there are not seating charts on the website and this allows us to choose a seat that you are most likely to be happy with.

Enjoy the beginning of the new season, and please let us help you if we can!

Remember: 215-569-8080