The Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society concludes its 39th summer season with a pair of concerts on Monday, August 17, at the Old Whaling Church, and Tuesday, August 18, at the Chilmark Community Center, featuring violinist Roger Wilkie, cellist Antonio Lysy and pianist Delores Stevens, artistic director of the music society.
The program will open with Zoltan Kodaly’s Duo for Violin and Cello, opus 7, written in 1914. The piece, steeped in the folk music traditions of Hungary and Rumania, is acknowledged as the greatest and most popular in the scant repertoire for this pairing.
After the string duo, Mr. Wilkie and Ms. Stevens will perform the Romance for Violin & Piano, a composition by the Spanish violin prodigy Pablo de Sarasate. In his program notes, Paul Stevens describes this set of three pieces as “salon music at its most enjoyable, with stunning technique balanced by gorgeous Spanish melodicism.”
After an intermission, Mr. Lysy and Ms. Stevens will perform Astor Piazzola’s Le Grand Tango for Cello and Piano, an extremely challenging piece written in 1982 for one of the greatest cellists of all time, Mistislav Rostropovich. The program will conclude with all three artists together on stage, performing Antonin Dvorak’s great work, the Piano Trio in e minor, known popularly as the Dumky.
Roger Wilkie, concertmaster of the Long Beach Symphony, has also served as concertmaster with the Los Angeles Music Center Opera Orchestra, and the Real Filharmonia de Galicia in Spain. An avid chamber musician, he’s been described by the Los Angeles Times as having “surpassing virtuosity, a thrilling legato tone, and a sense of full emotional engagement.” This is his third engagement with the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society.
Antonio Lysy has performed as a soloist around the world, appearing with orchestras from the Royal Philharmonic and Philharmonia Orchestras of London to the Camerata Academica of Salzburg, Zurich Tonhalle, the Zagreb Soloists, Orchestra di Padova e il Veneto, the Israel Sinfonietta, and in Canada with the Montreal and Toronto symphony orchestras. He has recorded extensively for CBC Radio, BBC Radio, Classic FM and other European radio networks.
Both concerts are presented at 8 p.m. Tickets are $30, and students are always admitted free.
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