Iwazumi
The NEPA Chamber Music Society will perform a concert – “Sensational Strings” – at First Presbyterian Church on Sunday, Jan. 14, at 4 p.m., featuring string sextets by Tchaikovsky and Brahms.
The church is located at 300 School St. in Clarks Summit. The concert is open to the public free of charge, with a free-will offering taken to help defray the costs of the event.
The NEPA Chamber Music Society is led by violinist John Michael Vaida and his wife, Amy Iwazumi. NEPACMS is thrilled to present its most ambitious program yet, pairing the sublime Brahms Second Sextet, a masterpiece exuding elegance and rich lyricism, with Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence, a bright and vigorous composition for string sextet, reminiscent of his renowned ballets.
Over several years, Tchaikovsky painstakingly sketched, worked on, and reworked Souvenir de Florence, and expressed that composing for a string sextet is “terribly difficult. … It seems that rather than writing for six voices, I am, in essence, composing for the orchestra, and only then arranging it for six string instruments.”
Indeed, these magnificent string sextets will fill the venue with resonances like an orchestra! The concert will feature John Vaida and Ambroise Aubrun on violin, Amy Iwazumi and Kristina Giles on viola, and Erin Ellis and Lisa Caravan on cello.
The series is supported by a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a Lackawanna County Community Arts and Culture Grant, and by individual contributions.
For more information call the church at 570-586-6306.
