Chamber Music at the KMA

The chamber music keeps flowing this week, (Wednesday and Thursday at 7:00 p.m. at the Knoxville Museum of Art), with Gabe Lefkowitz and Friends taking the “stage” at KMA's Great Hall.  Gabe has some awesome tunes in store, and I'm thrilled to be on board for the closing work on the program, Dvorak's Piano Quartet in E-flat.  It's a work from Dvorak's very bountiful compositional period directly before the luscious 8th Symphony and the "Dumky" Trio, on the eve of his storied sojourn in America.  I have been wanting to play this piece for DECADES. 

The other works on the program, which I will enjoy listening to, are the Debussy Sonata No. 3 in G for Violin and Piano of 1917, a delightful, stream-of-consciousness work painted from an impressionistic palette.  The notorious Caprice No. 24 by Paganini will also be on the first half, a work which is literally the basis for Rachmaninov's timeless Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.  This theme and 11 variations will leave you dazzled.

Pianist Kevin Class will collaborate with Gabe on the Debussy, another in a long string of productions on which he and Gabe have partnered.  Violist Katy Gawne and I will join those two to present the Dvorak.  Kevin continues to “go hard in the paint,” with the final installment of his presentation of the complete piano chamber music of Brahms on February 15 at UT's Powell Recital Hall.  Katy and I will reunite with former KSO Associate Concertmaster and current UT Professor of Violin Miro Hristov, joining Kevin on Brahms' Piano Quartet in A Major (another work I have been waiting DECADES to play).  The Piano Quintet of Brahms will close out that concert and that series. Joining him will be KSO cellist Stacy Miller, violinists Sara Matayoshi and Ruth Bacon, and violist Hillary Herndon.  As if that weren't enough, Kevin has another cycle going on, the complete Piano Sonatas of Mozart!  The first two servings in that series (which will undoubtedly span at least a couple years, as there are 17 of them) will take place January 27 and March 3.  This link is the program for a previous Brahms recital, but scroll down to see the multitude of performances in which he is involved, either at the keyboard or on the podium.