Telluride Chamber Music Festival 2015: Final Weekend

11 Aug Telluride Chamber Music Festival 2015: Final Weekend

The 42nd anual Telluride Chamber Music Festival concludes this weekend, with concerts at Christ Church and a closing with a dinner following Sunday matinee on August 16. Details here. Concert tickets, $25, here.

In the early 1970s, Telluride was just beginning to pulse thanks to a chap from Beverly Hills named Joe Zoline, who had just opened the ski resort. Still, half of Main Street was boarded up and people were high-tailing it out of town muttering darkly about the closing of the Idarado Mines. The historic Sheridan Opera House was a camping ground for derelicts with broken glass and dusty mattresses everywhere. But it was good enough for Gloria Swanson, honored guest at the 1st annual Telluride Film Festival. And it was good enough for Roy Malan and Robin Sutherland, for many years stalwart co-directors of the Telluride Chamber Music Festival.

Roy Malan, co-founder, Telluride Chamber Music Festival

They played despite the venue.

And the crowd liked the sound.

The term “chamber music” conjures a small group of people – more than one, but fewer than 15 – performing centuries-old masterworks in an intimate space without a conductor.

For aficionados, the genre is the height of cultural aspiration: emotional, intellectual, and political dramas played out in sound. For everyone else, however, “art music” is quaint or worse, dull. At least part of the problem is the name: when many people hear the word “classical,” they think “dead white men” and “not relevant.”

Fans of the Telluride Chamber Music Festival know better.

Telluride Chamber Music Festival fans return year after year like moths to a flame to hear the music of their “rock stars,” composers such as Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, brand names in the genre.

The 42nd annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival, one of the longest running chamber music events, takes place (weekends only) Thursday, August 6 – Sunday August 16. This year’s theme: “Blues to Brahms.”

Brahms?

Not for the faint of heart – or talent.

Insiders know chamber musicians take their measure with Brahms: if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. What’s required are musicians who are at once conservative and exacting – and revolutionary.

Done right, Brahms is all about Expressionistic intensity and spot on musicianship.

And the blues?

Traditionally, blues is an African-American music that traverses a wide range of emotions and musical styles. “Feeling blue” is expressed in songs whose verses lament injustice or express longing for a better life and lost loves, jobs, and money. But blues is also a raucous dance music that celebrates pleasure and success. Central to the idea of any blues performance is the concept that, by performing or listening to the blues, one is able to overcome sadness, lose the blues.

It will be interesting to see how the very creative Malan (and friends) tie up that alliterative package in a neat musical bow.

Telluride Chamber Music kicks off the 2015 Season with the “Concert in the Park,” Thursday, August 6, in Town Park. Bring your picnic dinner and enjoy the music which starts at 6 p.m.

Friday, August 7, features the music of Ravel, Schumann, and Mendelssohn. At the Sunday matinee, August 9, Metropolitan Opera Tenor, Allan Glassman is featured. Friday, August 14 and Sunday, August 16, Milhaud, London, Dohnanyi, Mozart, and Brahms bring down the curtain.

Telluride Chamber Music Festival musicians include Roy Malan; Susan Freier; Toby Appel, also a regular at Telluride Musicfest; Polly Malan; Stephen Harrison; Larry London; and Keisuke Nakagoshi.

Full schedule of final weekend below:

Again, $25 tickets are available at www.telluridechambermusic.org, Telluride Music Store or at the door prior to each concert.