Dear Friends,

Welcome to the exciting 10th-Anniversary Season of Parlance Chamber Concerts! Twenty-six exceptional artists will grace our stage in seven celebratory events.

Our gala opener on September 25 will have you dancing in the aisles. Grammy Award-winning guitarist Jason Vieaux will collaborate with the stellar Escher String Quartet in an exuberant international mix. The afternoon will journey from Hugo Wolf’s buoyant Italian Serenade to Luigi Boccherini’s sizzling Fandango, reaching a toe-tapping climax with Alan Jay Kernis’s irrepressible 100 Greatest Dance Hits for Guitar and String Quartet.

On October 30, New York City’s “Musical Power Couple,” cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, will join Emerson Quartet violinist Philip Setzer for an afternoon of favorite piano trios. Shostakovich’s youthfully ardent C-minor trio, composed at 17, was inspired by his first love, Tanya. Beethoven’s Trio in E-flat, Op. 1, No. 1, was the publishing debut of the supremely confident 25-year-old genius who already sensed his power to permanently alter the musical landscape. The program will conclude with the 30-year-old Schubert’s profound Trio in E-flat Major, the soulful outpouring of the still-young composer who knew he was nearing the end of his much-too-short life.

On November 20, the internationally celebrated pianist Jonathan Biss will partner with the incomparable principal string players of the New York Philharmonic: concertmaster Frank Huang, principal associate concertmaster Sheryl Staples, principal violist Cynthia Phelps, and principal cellist Carter Brey. Their “English-speaking” program will include Dvořák‘s luminous American Quartet, Gershwin’s charming Lullaby, and Elgar’s lushly romantic quintet for piano and strings.

On December 18, The Met Orchestra’s exquisite harpists, Mariko Anraku and Emmanuel Ceysson, will join forces with seven principal players of the Met Orchestra for a celestial afternoon of music making. Their alluring program will include duos and ensemble works featuring the harp by Debussy and Ravel and engaging new music by the award-winning, Ridgewood-based composers Melinda Wagner* and Gilad Cohen*.

On February 26, the legendary pianist Emanuel Ax will grace our stage for the first time. Hailed the world over as one of the paramount musical artists of our age, he will offer a ruminative set of Impromptus by Schubert, Chopin, and the young American composer Samuel Adams, followed by his signature interpretation of Chopin’s great Sonata in B minor. This dramatic work ranges across a panoramic musical terrain, at times majestic, at times tragic, culminating in the tour-de-force finale regarded as one of the most technically daring movements in the entire piano repertoire.

On March 26, the elegant Jerusalem String Quartet will make its Parlance debut. Strad Magazine characterized this ensemble in glowing terms, saying, “Superlatives are inadequate in describing just how fine this playing was from one of the young, yet great quartets of our time.” The first half of their program will have an undercurrent of Hungarian passion as they perform Beethoven’s gripping, Gypsy-inflected C-minor string quartet and Bartók’s darkly musing second quartet. After intermission, Dvořák’s last string quartet in G major brings the afternoon to a jubilant, sunlit resolution.

On April 23, Parlance’s 10th-anniversary season will arrive at a celebratory conclusion with the return of the Met’s ravishing mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard, one of the most charismatic and fast-rising vocal stars of our time. Her sold-out Parlance debut in 2014-15 was one of the highlights of our past seasons. Isabel will be joined by the masterful collaborative pianist Warren Jones, a great favorite of our audience since his debut appearance in the winter of 2008. Don’t miss this glittering final event of Parlance Chamber Concert’s 10th-Anniversary season!

Michael Parloff

*Melinda Wagner is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Her Trombone Concerto was recently premiered by the NY Philharmonic, and she is currently working on a piece for the Chicago Symphony.

*Gilad Cohen, a professor at Ramapo College, is a Princeton Ph.D. and the winner of the 2010 Israeli Prime Minister Award for Composers.

Programs and artists are subject to change.

Parlance Program Notes

​

LOCATION

At West Side Presbyterian Church
6 South Monroe Street
Ridgewood, NJ 07450
For map and directions, click here.
 

CONCERT AMENITIES