Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music co-founder
Wanda Fleck has for 15 years overseen the programming of what
has quietly become one of the borough’s longest-running musical
institutions.
Since its debut in December 1988, Brooklyn Friends has put on
93 concerts to intensely loyal audiences, mostly from its home
base at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church.
Their upcoming 16th season will culminate with a rare and most
welcome milestone: the group’s 100th concert, on March 28. That
performance will include a rare commission for a new work by
Brooklyn Friends, David Little’s Piano Trio, to be performed
by the Amelia Piano Trio, who played for Brooklyn Friends for
the first time last year.
"We asked David to write a piece for our 100th concert because
I had heard some of his work, and it just leaped out at me,"
says Fleck. "He knows that it’s going to be a festive occasion,
so he won’t be writing any dirges!"
The Amelia Trio will be playing two core works of the trio repertoire:
Beethoven’s Opus. 11 Trio and Antonin Dvorak’s famous "Dumky
Trio."
But that milestone concert is six months away; Brooklyn Friends
is presenting six other recitals in its 2003-04 season, including
the opening performance, on Sept. 21, of bassist Ranaan Meyer
and fiddlers Zachary De Pue and Nicolas Kendall, who put their
own spin on classical composers.
"I heard them in Philadelphia and could hear what they can
do," says Fleck. "They first called themselves the
Bluegrass Ensemble [at press time they do not have a group name],
but I don’t hear that entirely in their playing. But because
they’re so incredibly good, their unique take on this music somehow
works."
Although the trio is scheduled to play music by Bach, Brahms,
Bartok, Astor Piazzolla and others in their inimitable style,
Fleck says, "I don’t know if [the program is] in stone.
They have their own compositions, they do a lovely ’Amazing Grace,’
and they play Hungarian pieces where they sound like an entire
orchestra of csardas [gypsy music] players."
Another obvious highlight, according to Fleck, will be the first
appearance of soprano Susanna Phillips, who will be accompanied
at her Nov. 23 recital by pianist Lydia Brown.
"I heard Susanna in a master class, and she was the best
singing voice there," Fleck says. "She was a Juilliard
student, so I went to hear her final recital there, and she was
again really terrific, so I went backstage afterwards and invited
her to come."
Phillips’ program is a meaty menu of Vivaldi, Schubert, Ernst
Chausson, Samuel Barber and Edvard Grieg.
"That’s mostly what I heard her perform in concert, and
it flowed so well," says Fleck. "Also, she’s very radiant
and has a very engaging personality."
The remainder of Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music’s 2003-04
schedule includes a 15-member ensemble, tentatively named E Pluribus,
performing Bach, Shostakovich, Mozart and Edward Elgar (Oct.
26); the Chiara String Quartet (Juilliard School’s quartet-in-residence)
performing Mozart, Schumann and Carter Pann’s "Love Letters"
(Feb. 8); violinists Jonathan Gandelsman and Colin Jacobson,
violist Nicholas Cords and cellist Raman Ramakrishnan performing
Beethoven and Britten string quartets, as well as Henry Purcell’s
"Fantasias for the Viols" (Feb. 29); and the Borealis
String Quartet and pianist Sara Davis Buechner performing a Beethoven
quartet, a Schumann quintet and a recent work by Canadian composer
Kelly Marie Murphy titled, "A Little Piece of My Heart"
(March 14).
With music from Bach and Beethoven to Pann and Murphy scheduled
this season, Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music definitely has
something for every classical music fan.
After a decade-and-a-half, Fleck has discovered that there is
no such thing as a "typical" audience.
"The mainstays have been there, coming time and again, since
the very beginning, since our very first concerts," she
explains, "but your audiences change when you change the
repertoire that you do.
"When we started programming new works and started commissioning
our own works to perform, some people stopped coming," she
says. "But some others said, ’Finally! We can hear something
new!’"
Brooklyn Friends of Chamber Music presents
bassist Ranaan Meyer and fiddlers Zachary De Pue and Nicolas
Kendall at Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, on Lafayette
Avenue at South Oxford Street, on Sept. 21 at 3 pm. Tickets are
$15, $5 students. For reservations, call (718) 855-3053.
