Students at Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music will play more than 13 hours of chamber music between Friday evening and Sunday afternoon, Nov. 13-15. The Fall Chamber Music Festival packs 29 works by 17 composers into eight concerts, ranging from Haydn and Mozart to living composers Jeremy Gill and Andrea Clearfield.
“Beethoven left sage advice and a high bar for subsequent generations of musicians,” said Norman Fischer, the Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Cello and chair of chamber music, who founded the festival in 2005. “He said, ‘Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets. For it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.’ It seems that there are more of these ‘secrets’ in the chamber music realm.”
Beethoven himself sets much of the weekend’s agenda. Five of his string quartets appear on the schedule, tracing 26 years of his career. The earliest, Op. 18, No. 6, dates to 1800. The last, the String Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131, was finished the year before his death and closes the festival Sunday afternoon.
Four Mendelssohn quartets are also on the program, including the String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13, which he wrote at 18. Schubert’s String Quartet No. 14 in D minor “Death and the Maiden” closes Saturday’s 1 p.m. concert, and Dvořák appears three times.
“This semiannual festival might be called ‘Greatest Chamber Music Hits,’ and this would definitely be your weekend to discover these treasures,” Fischer said.
Less familiar pieces share the weekend with the standards. Isang Yun’s “Together” and Clearfield’s “Three Songs after Poems by Pablo Neruda” both pair violin with double bass, and Arnold Bax’s “Elegiac Trio” will open the festival Friday with flute, viola and harp.
Fischer highlighted Saturday’s 7:30 p.m. concert. By his description, it moves from a lively Haydn quartet played by the Fiammetta Quartet, the Shepherd School’s graduate string quartet-in-residence, to a brooding Mendelssohn quartet and Moritz Moszkowski’s lighthearted Suite for Two Violins and Piano before closing with Dvořák’s exuberant Piano Quintet No. 2.
All concerts will take place in Duncan Recital Hall at Alice Pratt Brown Hall and will be livestreamed. Admission is free with no tickets required. Concerts begin at 5 and 7:30 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m. and 1, 4 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; and 1 and 3 p.m. Sunday. Programs and performers are subject to change.
“For those intrepid fans that endeavor to hear the whole marathon, we even serve refreshments on Saturday and Sunday afternoons,” Fischer said.
Learn more about the Shepherd School on its website.