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Ying Quartet, Trio Valtorna to play June concerts
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In 1942, Albert and Ruth Simms, the founders of Los Poblanos, launched the June Music Festival of Albuquerque.
On Sunday, June 2, and June 16, the renamed Chamber Music Albuquerque will feature music by American composers by the Ying Quartet and Trio Valtorna.
The quartet-in-residence at the prestigious Eastman School of Music, the Ying Quartet will perform Ned Rorem’s Third Quartet. The piece was commissioned by the original June Music Festival of Albuquerque.
Ying Quartet, Trio Valtorna to play June concerts
“Ned’s music has always seemed to reflect the best of American values in its honesty, its directness, its avoidance of any pretense or affectation,” said original first violinist Timothy Ying.
The Ying also will play Béla Bartók’s Quartet No. 2 and Antonín Dvorák’s Quartet in F major, op. 96, “American.”
“The Ying has championed the music of Ned Rorem,” said operations manager Laurie Thomas.
Rorem knew Leonard Bernstein, who introduced him to the composer Virgil Thompson. Rorem became Thompson’s copyist in exchange for lessons in orchestration.
“From the ’40s on, he devoted his life to composition,” Thomas said.
A tonal composer, Rorem listed Igor Stravinsky, Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel as influences.
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The Valtorna Trio will perform John Harbison’s “Twilight Music for Horn, Piano and Violin” on Sunday, June 16, at the Simms Center for the Performing Arts at Albuquerque Academy. Harbison mixes non-traditional triadic progressions, lyric chromaticism and rhythmic patterns taken from pop music.
“Harbison won a Pulitzer Prize for composition in 1987,” Thomas said. “His main influences are Bach, Stravinsky and jazz.
“He believes music is eternally mysterious and not of this world,” Thomas said.
The musicians will also play Brahms’ Horn Trio and Beethoven’s “Violin Sonata No. 7 in C minor Op. 30, No. 2.”
The trio formed in 2011 with violinist Ida Kavafian and French hornist David Jolley, known for their performances at Northern New Mexico’s Music from Angel Fire. The young pianist Gilles Vonsattel rounds out the trio.
“Both programs are really life-affirming and appropriate to the season,” Thomas said. “Both groups are really top-notch.”
The Ying Quartet will be at Congregation Albert on Sunday, June 2.
