Combining classical favorites with unusual new finds, the St. Mark’s Recital Series does it again. On Jan. 11, the series will continue with “Flute Quartets,” a program beginning and ending with Corelli and Mozart, and in between, an odd and illuminating array of contemporary pieces that range from tender memorials to witty, laugh-out-loud found sounds.
Flutist Shelley Mann credits her colleague violinist Brandon Christensen for coming up with the idea of a concert of flute quartets.
“We performed together last March in the annual Bach Festival,” Mann said. “It was such a successful collaboration, Brandon suggested a program of flute quartets. We built the concert around one of my all-time favorites: Mozart’s D Major Quartet, K 285.
“No one would ever want to miss hearing the Mozart, and the rest of the program provides a lot of variety for every type of listener,” she said.
Mann and company will make you wait until the end of the program for that sparkling Mozart flute quartet. The ensemble decided to frame new works that are lovely, poignant and witty, with two fairly well-known chamber works for flute and strings.
Arcangelo Corelli’s spare, beautiful trio sonata, composed in 1700, will open the program.
“Brandon, Stasie and I will be the warm-up band, as it were,” Mann said. “The Corelli piece is delightful, and we’ll be playing with just flute, violin and cello.”
“Divertimento,” a 1975 work by the late American composer Katherine Hoover, will present a contrast, Mann said.
“She was a flutist and composer whose most influential work was ‘Kokopeli’ and her quartet is a new piece for each of us,” she said.
Like the Mozart quartet, “Divertimento” is scored for flute and string trio and displays a classical mode some critics have likened to Mozart’s crystal-clear structure.
Randy Nordschow wrote in NewMusic Box that Hoover’s two-movement work begins with “a catchy, insouciant Allegro that skips by with an elusive, rhythmic lilt. Part Two is a complex structure interleaving dance episode with slow nocturnal music.”
Aaron Copland’s Threnodies I and II follow, and are achingly beautiful memorials to two longtime friends who died in the early 1970s: Igor Stravinsky and Beatrice Cunningham. Cunningham was a former Vogue model turned television producer. Her Wisdom Series from the 1950s featured Copland, Stravinsky, Picasso, Nehru and other prominent figures of the time. You can listen to the seven-minute Threnodies I and II in various iterations on YouTube.
Before the quartet concludes with Mozart’s cut-glass quartet, the lightest and most unusual piece on the program will come from fellow Westerner Phillip Bimstein. Born in 1947, Bimstein has had a checkered career before settling in Utah and composing unusual instrumental works that are accompanied by found sound and electronic music.
Bimstein’s “Fantasy for Flute, Frogs, Crickets and Coyotes” “is a quartet of sorts,” Mann said. The other players are named in the title. To say the least, “I’ll be playing with recorded sounds.”
Audience members may well need Mozart’s Quartet In D Major, K 285 to reset their musical compasses. All in all, it looks like a winning program to light up the new year.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theatre Critics Association.
If you go
WHAT:
“Flute Quartets,” St. Mark’s Recital Series, flutist Rochelle Mann, violinists Brandon Christensen and Lauren Avery Heuser, cellist Anastasia Nellos.
WHERE:
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 900 East Third Ave.
WHEN:
7 p.m. Jan. 11.
TICKETS:
Adults $20, students 12 and older $5, at the door.
MORE Information:
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