2008 Concerts:

Saeculum Aureum

~ Chamber music from the time of Beethoven for winds and guitar ~

Oleg Timofeyev - Russian 7-string guitar

Richard Spece - classical period clarinet

William McColl - classical period basset horn

Jeffrey Cohan - eight-keyed flute made in London in 1820

The Cascade Early Music Festival presents a unique program with Saeculum Aureum in a performance of chamber music from the time of Beethoven for winds and  guitar on period instruments, with special guest Oleg Timofeyev on the Russian 7-string guitar, which originated during the lifetime of Mozart in Russia, along with a flute made in London in 1820, clarinet, and the rarely heard basset horn from this period, played by UW Professor Emeritus William McColl.

Saeculum Aureum performances:

Sunday afternoon, August 10 at 2:00 PM at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, at 2117 Walnut Street in Bellingham. For directions and additional information please call St. Paul's Episcopal Church at (360) 733-2890.

Sunday early evening, August 10 at 6:00 PM at Fir-Conway Lutheran Church, at 18101 Fir Island Road in Conway, south of Mount Vernon. For directions and additional information please call Fir-Conway Lutheran Church at (360) 445-5396.

Monday, August 11 at 7:30 PM at Trinity Lutheran Church at SR525 & Woodard Road in Freeland on Whidbey Island. For directions and additional information please call Trinity Lutheran Church at (360) 331-5161.

 

The following  review of a similar program in this past Monday’s WASHINGTON POST gives additional information about this program:     “The Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival came to a close Friday with rarely heard music for period flute, clarinet and harpsichord. Flutist and early music specialist Jeffrey Cohan assembled an adventuresome program: works drawn from a brief but crucial period in music, dating from Mozart's generation to Beethoven's early decades -- a time of monumental shifts in musicmaking.     “These pieces, mostly by second-tier composers, would have been played in a Viennese palace sitting room or art-loving citizen's parlor. At that time, chamber music was often intended purely as accessible entertainment for a royal audience, and playable by skilled amateurs from the aristocracy or enlightened citizenry. ...Cohan, clarinetist Richard Spece and harpsichordist Joseph Gascho made the evening worthwhile by their elegant artistry, especially in their closely articulated phrasing and improvisations so finely tuned to the style of each piece that they sounded as if they had been written in the original score.”      -- Cecelia Porter, THE WASHINGTON POST Monday, July 28, 2008    •  about the music: Born in Bavaria, Johannes Simon Mayr (1763-1845) made his career in Italy as composer of Italian operas which were performed from Venice to New York, though ultimately eclipsed by Rossini's, which former UW flute professor Felix Skowronek believed may be said to echo Mayr. Donizetti was his devoted student, Napoleon is said to have offered him a position (refused by Mayr), and Verdi took time off from a difficult production to travel to his funeral in Bergamo, Italy. The Bagatelles for basset horn, clarinet and flute reveal Mayr's skiII in writing for wind instruments and his familiarity with the music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven whose works he introduced to Bergamo audiences; one of the Bagatelles, in fact, uses a melody from Beethoven's sixth symphony. Nowadays, these delightful pieces are often heard in arrangements replacing basset horn with bassoon. Mozart's La clemenza di Tito (1791) was first performed in Prague, three months before his death. He brought his friend, the clarinetist Anton Stadler, along to perform the brilliant clarinet obbligato to the aria "Parto, parto", sung by the character Sextus, a male soprano. The words are "I go, I go, but you my love make peace with me". The 'love' is the very disturbed character Vitellia, who has been plotting against the very forgiving emperor Titus. The clarinet was evidently a very bright spot in the opera, for it was a great success at the first performance. It will be Mr. Cohan's duty to duplicate the formidable improvisational skills of those giants of vocalism, the castrati, by singing the role of Sextus on his flute in this arrangement by Jeffrey Cohan, with Oleg Timofeyev supporting the soloists as the orchestra otherwise would on Russian 7-string guitar. The program will include several of the delightful Bagatelles for flute, clarinet and basset horn by Johannes Simon Mayr, the rousing aria "Parto, parto..." from the opera La Climenza di Tito by Wolfgang A. Mozart, a trio for flute, clarinet and guitar by Conradin Kreutzer, and other chamber music from the early 19th century for guitar, flute, clarinet and basset horn.    •  about the artists: Oleg Timofeyev is one of the foremost authorities on the Russian seven-string guitar, and also plays renaissance, 10-course and baroque lutes, 19th-century guitar, viola da gamba and recorder. He has taught at the University of Iowa and at Grinnell College, and he founded the early music group Pratum Musicum for the Moscow Palace of Culture. He has received many fellowships, grants and awards, including a recent Fulbright for research in Russia, and a Ph.D. in Performance Practice from Duke University. His editions have been published by A-R Editions, and his articles have appeared in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and in periodicals including the Lute Society Quarterly. He has made several solo recordings for Dorian Recordings, including "The Wandering Lutenist" Centaur Records, and "The Golden Age of the Russian Guitar". For additional information about Mr. Timofeyev see www.russianguitar.net. William McColI is Emeritus Professor of Clarinet at the University of Washington and a founding member of the Soni Ventorum Wind Quintet. A graduate of the Vienna Academy of Music, he has performed with many string quartets and has been a member of the Philarmonia Hungarica in Vienna, the Orquestra Filarmonica de las Americas in Mexico City, the Puerto Rico Symphony, and the Casals Festival Orchestra under Pablo Casals. On period clarinet, he performs with the Classical Consort in Seattle, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, the Handel & Haydn Society in Boston, and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco.             In his 'spare' time, Professor McCoIl has built several replicas of early clarinets and basset horns.  He has an extensive recording history on both modern and historical instruments and, as a member of the New World Basset Horn Trio, has recorded music of Mozart and Stadler for Harmonia Mundi. Richard Spece regularly performs as a soloist and chamber musician on modern and period clarinets. He holds a Master of Music degree from the University of Washington and a Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University. He has played clarinet with orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States, Mexico, and Europe. His fervor for period instrument performance has led him to perform with such ensembles as the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Ama Deus Ensemble, California Bach Society, Magnificat, Classical Consort, Concert Spirituel, and Opera Lafayette.  He has also performed on numerous concert series including the Mozart Society of California Chamber Music Series in Carmel, CA, Summer Festival of Sacred Music, NY, Washington DC, the Paley Festival, VA, and Music on the Mountain Series, WA.  Spece is also currently a member of Circa 1800, the only period instrument woodwind quintet in the U.S. He has several recordings to his credit and can be heard on the Crystal Records, RCWinds, and Delos labels.  Currently, Mr. Spece teaches at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Artistic Director and flutist Jeffrey Cohan has performed as soloist in 25 countries, having received international acclaim both as a modern flutist and as one of the foremost specialists on all transverse flutes from the Renaissance through the present.  He is the only person to win both the Erwin Bodky Award in Boston, and the highest prize awarded in the Flanders Festival International Concours Musica Antiqua in Brugge, Belgium.  First Prize winner of the Olga Koussevitzky Young Artist Awards Competition, he has performed throughout Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, and worldwide for the USIA Arts America Program.  He received the highest rating from the Music Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts, and has recorded for NPR in the United States, and for national radio and television in Germany, Switzerland, France, Belgium, Holland, Fiji and the Solomon Islands.  Many works have been written for and premiered by him, including four new flute concerti since 2000.  He is artistic director of the Capitol Hill Chamber Music Festival in Washington, DC and can "play many superstar flutists one might name under the table" according to the New York Times. The Cascade Early Music Festival has presented concerts, workshops and lecture-demonstrations at the Icicle Creek Music Center, the Grünewald Guild and other locations in and around Leavenworth, and in Bellingham since 2004. These activities, always on period instruments, have celebrated the anniversaries of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 2006, the inventor of the piano Bartholomeo Cristofori in 2005, and the music of other composers from the renaissance through the time of Beethoven. Participating artists from the United States, Canada and Germany have included baroque violinist Ingrid Matthews, Viola da Gambists Susie Napper and Margriet Tindemans, lutenist Stephen Stubbs, German harpsichordist Jan Weinhold, guitarist Oleg Timofeyef and baroque dancer Anna Mansbridge.

Spring Series A pair of Sunday afternoon period instrument early music performances will be presented by the Cascade Early Music Festival at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Bellingham and Faith Lutheran Church in Leavenworth. In Flutes from Six Centuries, Jeffrey Cohan will play flutes and music from the renaissance through the present on exact replicas and antique transverse flutes. Harpsichordist George Shangrow and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan will perform sonatas for flute and harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach. Both concerts will take place on Sunday afternoons at 4:00 PM in Bellingham and Leavenworth (see below) Jeffrey Cohan transverse flutes George Shangrow  harpsichord

FLUTES from SIX CENTURIES Sunday, March 2 at 4 PM • St. Paul's Episcopal Church 2117 Walnut Street in Bellingham Sunday, March 9 at 4 PM • Faith Lutheran Church 224 Benton in Leavenworth  • Flutes from Six Centuries Jeffrey Cohan's instruments to be heard in this performance range from the longest historical flute without keys, the renaissance great bass, to the modern flute, and they include 5 renaissance flutes of various sizes, four baroque flutes from various time periods and countries, two antique flutes made in London in 1785 and 1820 during the lifetimes of Mozart and Beethoven, an old-system flute from around 1900 which was owned by Frank Horsfall, the original first flutist of the Seattle Symphony, and the modern flute with which all are familiar. The reproductions of earlier flutes were made by contemporary flute builders in Boston, Seattle, Innsbruck and Florence. The program will include music by Georg Philipp Telemann, Jakob Van Eyck, Friedrich Kuhlau, a number of flutist-composers and unpublished variations on Auld Land Syne and other melodies which Jeffrey has unearthed in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.   JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH Sunday, April 13 at 4 PM • St. Paul's Episcopal Church 2117 Walnut Street in Bellingham Sunday, April 20 at 4 PM • Faith Lutheran Church 224 Benton in Leavenworth

• Johann Sebastian Bach JS Bach Sonatas for Flute and Harpsichord Harpsichordist George Shangrow and baroque flutist Jeffrey Cohan will perform the sonatas for flute and harpsichord by Johann Sebastian Bach. The Bach Sonatas are some of the most well-known works for flute. For over 30 years the Cohan-Shangrow Duo have performed all eight of them in one program, which Jeffrey has always performed from memory. It has been argued that three of the eight sonatas may in fact be by one of Bach's sons; this shorter program will include only the five sonatas which are surely by JS Bach. Most baroque sonatas are written with no more than a bass line or “continuo” part from which the harpsichordist improvised an accompaniment. J.S. Bach was the first to fully write out an “obbligato” harpsichord part for both hands to accompany a solo sonata, and the flute sonatas are of both types, in addition to the Partita for solo flute, which will be included on the program. _____________________________________________________ A suggested donation (a free will offering) of $15 will be requested in Bellingham, Leavenworth and Conway. On Whidbey Island a free will offering will be requested to help cover expenses. Youth 18 and under are encouraged to attend for free. For further information please call (360) 445-3164 or (800) 281-8026.

cascadefestival@aol.com • 800-281-8026 • 20614 Maupin Road, Mount Vernon, WA 98273 ~ Updated August, 2008 ~