Brahms chamber music to close out Sarasota Music Festival

By JOHN FLEMING, Times Performing Arts Critic

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 16, 2000

Chamber music can mainly be heard at festivals in the mountains and lake country of northern climes over the next few months, so the closing weekend of the Sarasota Music Festival is the last hurrah for listeners who brave the Florida summer.

Topping the lineup of faculty guest artists is Martin Chalifour, principal concertmaster of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, featured in Saturday's all-Brahms program, playing in the Piano Quintet in F minor and the Piano Quartet in G minor at 8 p.m. at the Sarasota Opera House. Chalifour will be joined by various combinations of violist Robert Vernon, pianists Robert Levin and Susan Starr, cellists Ronald Leonard and Timothy Eddy and violinist Margaret Batjer in the works.

Tonight's program, also at the opera house at 8, has works of Telemann, Martinu and Dohnanyi. Tickets are $16 to $30. There's a free student concert at 3 p.m. today at Holley Hall. Call (941) 953-3434.

SONATAS -- In another chamber music event, violinist Carolyn Stuart and pianist Svetozar Ivanov are winding up a weeklong festival devoted to the sonata repertoire at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

"It's very unusual for a festival to be focused on the sonata," said Stuart, who is part of a duo with Ivanov, her husband. They teach in the USF music school.

Seven violin-piano duos, mostly high school and college students, have been studying with Stuart and Ivanov this week on works ranging from Beethoven's Spring Sonata to Ned Rorem's Night Music.

Two events are free and open to the public, a master class at 4 p.m. today and a concert at noon Saturday. Both are in the Music Recital Hall on the Tampa campus. Call (813) 974-2311.

YEOMAN -- Gilbert and Sullivan operettas are not typical community theater fare anymore, so it's worth noting that Clearwater's Francis Wilson Playhouse is doing Yeoman of the Guard. The large cast is headed by Daniel O'Connor Petrie, Fred Schumacher, Susan Spaulding and Susan Demers. Jamie Bierchen directed (and plays jester Jack Point), and Judi Hurst leads the band. Performances are at 8 tonight and Saturday night and 2 p.m. Sunday. Tickets are $10 and $12. Call (727) 446-1360.

PLAY ON -- Trying to forget American Stage's disco version of Twelfth Night? Well, there's another, presumably more successful musical adaptation of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, Play On!, which had a Broadway run three years ago. Set in Harlem in the 1940s and featuring music of Duke Ellington, it was conceived and directed by Sheldon Epps. A production taped last August at California's Pasadena Playhouse airs at 10 p.m. Wednesday on WEDU-Ch. 3.

PIPES -- Components of a historic pipe organ began arriving this week for installation in Jacoby Symphony Hall, home of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra. Built in 1912 by Casavant Freres of St. Hyacinthe, Quebec, the acoustic organ has a four-manual console and 94 ranks of pipes. Only a few American symphony halls have pipe organs.

The 50-ton instrument's acquisition, restoration and installation -- in all, a $1.3-million project -- will culminate with a gala inaugural concert of Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony, Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor and Copland's Symphony for Organ and Orchestra on March 16, 2001.

PREMIERE -- St. Petersburg composer Vernon Taranto Jr.'s Quartet . . . for a Time of Ends was premiered Monday in a concert by musicians from the Louisiana State University School of Music at the Weill Recital Hall of Carnegie Hall in New York.