Marking their 12th anniversary season the Brightmusic Chamber Ensemble presented their fourth series of concerts on March 16th and 17th and offered Paul Schoenfield’s Sparks of Glory, a setting of Holocaust stories by Israeli journalist Moshe Prager, written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in 1995. Utilizing folk music idioms of European Jewish communities popular in the 1930s and 40s, the work is scored for chamber ensemble and narrator and features special guest Pamela Richman.
Also on the program, the Suite for Violin, Clarinet and Piano from L’histoire Du Soldat by Igor Stravinsky, the original theatrical work for actors, dancers and chamber ensemble inspired by an old Russian folk tale about a deserting soldier and the Devil who comes to possess his soul, and the Piano Quintet in a minor, Op 84 of Sir Edward Elgar, written at Brinkwells in Sussex, where the composer and his wife Alice retreated to escape the pressures of World War I. Inspired by the beauty of the rural countryside composed four of his most inspired and imaginative works, three chamber pieces and the Cello Concerto.
Performance Oklahoma is heard on Saturday evening at 8pm on Classical 88.7-1!