Change brings good things to the Rossetti String Quartet, as founding member Henry Gronnier moves to first chair and chamber music veteran Sara Parkins (of the Grammy Award-winning Angeles Quartet) becomes the second violinist, joining the extraordinary Thomas Diener, violist and Eric Gaenslan, cellist.

With its trademark lush lyricism and subtle, colorful palette, the Rossetti offers concerts of all-Russian, all-French and all-Dvorak programs in 2010/11.

The Juilliard String Quartet heads east this month, playing concerts and offering masterclasses throughout Japan, following a round of critically acclaimed concerts in Houston, San Francisco and Philadelphia:

“Most performers are heard probing the piece from the outside; the Juilliard reading exuded inside understanding, particularly in the pulsating slow movement." -- David Patrick Stearns for THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, October 30, 2009

The JSQ returns to New York for a December 1 concert at Alice Tully Hall, heads to Baltimore for masterclasses at the Peabody Institute of Music and a concert at Shriver Hall Concert Series, and will join a celebration of founding member Robert Mann at the Manhattan School of Music on December 15.
 

This month Trio Jean Paul’s newest disc, Mendelssohn Piano Trios, Nos. 1 & 2, on Avie Records, is released in the US. The Trio’s "heartfelt yet scrupulous attention to European music's grammar and vocabulary" (NEW YORK TIMES) is put to gorgeous use in this recording, click here for listening excerpts.

Trio Jean Paul tours Bavaria next month, and returns to North America in the spring, playing concerts in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Quebec and Montreal.

2010/11 US touring times include October 7-17.

Midway through a US tour, presenters and audiences are cheering about the dynamic a capella group, amarcord’s “wonderfully fun” and “deeply entertaining for everyone” program, “European Romanticism” featuring folks songs and works by Saint-Saëns, Mendelssohn, Janacek, and Elgar.

This season also sees the release of a new recording of German romantic works, “Rastlose Liebe” on Raum Klang. Featuring 8 works in their premiere recordings, including a rediscovered Mendelssohn chorus for male voices, the disc offers a musical view of amarcord's hometown Leipzig. Contact us for your complimentary copy here.

2010/11 US touring times include November 30 – December 7 and April 1 – 17.
 

The FLUX began this month with their annual visit to Wesleyan University, doing educational work and presenting a concert of student compositions. Other fall highlights include performances at the 5th International Festival of Culture in Chihuahua, Mexico (click here for video of FLUX performing with composer Julio Estrada) and at the Kennedy Center’s Millenium Stage, with composer/musician Sophia Serghi and friends. <br><br>
Next month they perform the world premiere of a new work by punk-innovator David First, commissioned by Meet-the-Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA program, and presented at the downtown new music space Roulette in New York City.<br><br>
And, in a Colbert web highlight, click here to listen to FLUX violist Max Mandel speak about Morton Feldman’s epic String Quartet No. 2.

Masques made a welcome return to the US last month, playing a sublime program of Biber and his contemporaries (click here for listening samples from the album) at the equally sublime settings of the Frick Collection in New York City and the National Gallery in Washington D.C., and at the University of Vermont.

In 2010/11 Masques tours the US with a Spanish Baroque program November 3-14, and March 3-14.

Marino Formenti returns to the Los Angeles Philharmonic for Lou Harrison’s Piano Concerto, led by Maestro Gustavo Dudamel -- a re-engagement following Formenti's wildly acclaimed performance of Messiaen's "Des Canyons aux étoiles" with Esa-Pekka Salonen. It’s just another highlight in a wonderful fall season: Formenti was artist-in-residence at the Weimar Festival, performed at the Hitzacker Festival, reunited with Maurizio Pollini to lead the Pollini Perspectives programs in Paris and Milan, and performed his renowned Kurtag’s Ghosts recital program at the Vienna Konzerthaus and at Peak Performances for Montclair State University.

Next month he returns to San Francisco Performances for a recital series Aspects of the Divine. It features Messiaen’s “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant Jesus” and a program, Seven Last Words, presenting Haydn’s masterpiece in conjunction with a new work by Bernhard Lang.

Till Fellner just wrapped up the fourth installment of his Beethoven Sonata Cycle, performing in Boston, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

 “The latest program, of five sonatas from across the first two stylistic periods of Beethoven's career, stood out as the most consistently beautiful, showcasing Fellner's exquisite musical craftsmanship, technically impeccable but never showy or vulgar.”  - Charles T. Downey, IonArts, November 3, 2009

Next week, Fellner plays Beethoven Concerto No.1 with the Vienna Chamber Philharmonic at the Vienna Konzerthaus, and then with the SWR Sinfonieorchester Baden-Baden & Freiburg. In December, he begins the fifth installment of the Beethoven Sonatas, playing in Stuttgart, Salzburg, Rome, Tokyo, and beginning the new year at the Vienna Konzerthaus, at Wigmore Hall in London, and in Paris. Fellner returns to North America in January, playing Beethoven 1 with Kent Nagano and the Montreal Symphony, and touring the Beethoven Sonatas, installment V, in February 2010.

This season sees the welcome North American return of pianist Mari Kodama. While Europe is her home base for her family and much of her performing, Ms. Kodama is now broadening her schedule, with the current season hearing her on tour with the Ensemble Orchestrale de Paris, curating a chamber series at Bad Kissengen Klangwerkstatt, and running her very personal San Francisco chamber music festival, Forest Hill Musical Days. Last month she played a “fine performance, pearly in tone but somehow assertive” of Mozart K.595 with Bernhard Klee and the Montreal Symphony(Montreal Gazette, Oct. 29, 2009) and then began November with a well-received recital of Bach, Chopin and Beethoven at Spivey Hall in Georgia.

 

She now joins the Japan Philharmonic to tour the Liszt Concerto No. 1, and returns to the Montreal Symphony for a private performance of Mozart K.414 with Kent Nagano later this month. In December Kodama joins the Singapore Symphony for Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 4.

After beginning the fall on tour in Australia, pianist Marc-André Hamelin joined the Montreal Symphony for Liszt Concerto No. 2 in Montreal and at the International Festival de Cervantino in Mexico, where he played a recital as well.

 

Hamelin then headed home to Boston, joining the BSO’s Chamber Players for a performance of Brahms Piano Quartet No. 2 (he joins the orchestra next spring for Shostakovich 1). He played a recital at the Club Musicale de Quebec, and this month tours Europe, playing recitals in Portugal, Milan, Bergamo, Stuttgart, at London’s Wigmore Hall; the Strauss Burlesque with the BBC National Orchestra of Wales; and Saint-Saens 4 with the Orquesta Sinfonica de Valencia in Spain.

 

In December Hamelin plays recitals at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, at San Francisco Performances, and for La Jolla Music Society.

Pianist ALFRED BRENDEL kicked off a US lecture tour this week, offering his presentation, "On Character in Music", at the Philharmonic Society of Orange County.

 

"By assigning Beethoven's sonatas characters, descriptive phases, moods and other labels, he turns analysis, often so mathematical and structural, into a kind of poetry, available to the everyman. And though based on solid scholarship, he has fun with it, uses his imagination...Hearing Brendel talk about and play them again, even if in small slices, was a reminder of why he was such a great, beloved musician for so many years. He made them vivid for us." Timothy Mangan, The OC REGISTER, October 27, 2009

October 26 • Philharmonic Society of Orange County

October 30 • University of California, Berkeley

November 4 - 6 • New England Conservatory of Music

November 9 • Princeton University

November 11 • Yale University

November 16 • Washington Performing Arts Society (D.C.)

November 18 - 22 • The Juilliard School, co-sponsored by Carnegie Hall

Click here to read The Times Oct. 3, 2009 interview with Mr. Brendel, sharing his thoughts on life after performance, absurdist poetry, humor in music and more.