Violinists ‘Great and Small’ to Play for Resonance March 22

The sounds of Spring will literally be in the air at the next concert in the National Music Festival’s Resonance series on March 22. What better way to usher in the new season that will have arrived a few days earlier?

Violinist Emily Daggett Smith and pianist Constantine Finehouse will perform Beethoven’s Spring Sonata, more formally known as “Sonata No. 5 in F Major,” at St. Paul’s Kent, 7579 Sandy Bottom Rd., Chestertown.

“I love performing with him,” Smith said of Finehouse. “We have similar approach and the way that we communicate about music comes very naturally.” Later this spring, Smith will return for a third season as a violin mentor for NMF, which will be celebrating its 10^th anniversary this year, May 31 – June 13.

Smith plays with “inexpressible élan,” according to the Seattle Times. The Boston Globe, her hometown newspaper, called a performance there simply “gorgeous.”

She made her New York concerto debut with the Julliard Orchestra in Alice Tully Hall. Since then, Smith has played at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, the Shanghai Grand Theatre, and the Vienna Konzerthaus. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from The Juilliard School and a Doctor of Musical Arts from Stonybrook University.

Finehouse has performed extensively in the U.S. and abroad, including in Salzburg, London, Moscow, and St. Petersburg. He holds degrees from The Juilliard School and Yale University and currently teaches at the New England Conservatory.

The two musicians have collaborated often, said Smith, adding “I feel that when we perform there’s a spontaneity and a kind of trust and ability to be in the moment.”

Smith and Finehouse have chosen some of their favorite works, including César Franck’s “Sonata in A Major for Violin and Piano,” which the two have recorded for Eidolon Records.

The sonata runs the gamut from “serenely calm and beautiful in the first to tumultuous in the second,” Smith said. “I’ve heard people say the second movement sounds like ‘All hell is breaking loose.’” The third movement feels like an improvisation of inspired themes.

“The fourth opens beautiful and playful, all sunshiny,” she continued. “Then Franck reviews everything that has gone before, so we revisit the whole spectrum. And finally, it concludes with an uplifting theme.”

In a solo turn, Finehouse will perform Chopin’s “Ballade No. 4 in F Minor.”

The March 22 Resonance concert will feature opening numbers by the Fiddlesticks! Quartet, young musicians trained in the National Music Festival’s Fiddlesticks! Youth Strings Program, which provides free string instrument lessons to local youths. The quartet’s members include Brenna Quicho, violin; Winston Williams, viola; and Corrina Boyd, cello. They will play for approximately 30 minutes before the concert, as the audience arrives. The doors will open at 2:30 p.m.

Complimentary desserts and beverages are offered during intermissions of Resonance concerts. If the weather fails to deliver a true spring day, the parish hall’s fireplace will be put to use for warmth.

Tickets are $20 for adults and $5 for students with ID and children under 14 (https://nationalmusic.us/events-and-tickets/single-concert-tickets/). Admission is included for holders of the NMF combination pass and the Resonance season pass. The final Resonance concert of 2020 will feature Julia Mintzer, mezzo-soprano, on April 26.

Season passes are also now on sale for the 2020 National Music Festival at https://nationalmusic.us/product/festival-pass/.

RES·O·NANCE /ˈrezənəns/ Noun: the quality in a sound of being deep, full, and reverberating … a quality of richness or variety.

Don’t miss the latest! You can subscribe to The Chestertown Spy‘s free Daily Intelligence Report here