Classical music writer Gregory Sullivan Isaacs tracks what’s going on (not a whole lot, actually!) in classical concerts this summer.
Well, classical music fans, July is on the dry side … and August is worse. We’ll spend August looking forward to the fall, when most seasons start. In the meanwhile, there are three series of performances that should be terrific.
Ludwig van Beethoven
The beginning of July brings the always-excellent Mimir Chamber Music Festival at PepsiCo Hall at TCU in Fort Worth. There will be some changes this summer due to the fact that artistic director Curt Thompson — who used to be on the TCU faculty — accepted an appointment Down Under as head of strings at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music. He will present the same festival there in September.
The festival has been reduced to one week but the quality remains high and the programming fascinating. Concerts will be on July 2—7 (with a break on the Fourth). As before, the performers will be distinguished string players from orchestras around the country, such as the Chicago Symphony, and the programming covers a great range: from Dvorak and Beethoven to living composers such as Paul Schoenfeld and Dana Wilson. There will be a tango string quartet by Astor Piazzolla and Benjamin Britten’s third quartet. Two young quartets, chosen by a jury, will play.
In Dallas, the Fine Arts Chamber Players present Basically Beethoven at City Performance Hall in the Arts District. Concerts take place on the four Sunday afternoons in July and are free to the public, thanks to generous underwriters — no tickets or reservations are required. (Performances starts at 3 p.m., but at 2:30 there is a “rising star” performance by an outstanding young performer.) Each hour-long intermission-free concert features outstanding local performers; many are members of the Dallas Symphony, the Fort Worth Symphony and the Dallas Opera Orchestra.
Although it’s not specifically a music concert, there is a curious musical performance as part of the Tenth Annual Modern Dance Festival at the Modern in Fort Worth. The whole festival is amazing, but on July 19-21 and July 26-28, they will present “9 Beat Stretch/Music of the Spheres.” This is Scandinavian sound artist Leif Inge’s altered version of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony — it is stretched to 24 hours with no pitch distortion. (There have been dreadful performances of this piece that I felt stretched that long, but I cannot begin to imagine how this will sound.) While that happens, there will be other performance events scattered throughout the museum building and grounds. Various dancers/companies/artists (and audience members) will come and go. Anyone up for the whole 24 hours?
