Rembrandt Chamber Musicians present 20th Century Romance

MAR2025_slide — Credit:Rembrandt Chamber Musicians

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On Sunday, March 16, 2025 at 3:00 pm at Nichols Concert Hall the Rembrandt Chamber Musicians will present a program that includes: John Macfarlane, Simon Michal, violin; Carol Cook, viola; Ken Olsen, cello; Marta Aznavoorian, piano. The very exciting program offers SHOSTAKOVICH: Five Pieces for 2 violins and piano, MOSZKOWSKI: Suite for Two Violins and Piano, Op. 71 intermission KORNGOLD: Piano Quintet in E Major, Op. 15.

20th-Century Romance:

Today’s audience often describes early- to mid-20th-century classical music as harsh and resistant to the ears. As composer Milton Babbitt famously wrote in 1958, “Who cares if you listen?” While some musicians were engaged in breaking the bounds of tonality and writing music that deliberately trod less familiar ground, others were recognizing the limitations of this new aesthetic creed. As Aaron Copland wrote retrospectively of his atonal works, “During the mid-1930s I began to feel an increasing dissatisfaction with the relations of the music-loving public and the living composer. The old ‘special’ public of the modern music concerts had fallen away…. It seemed to me that we composers were in danger of working in a vacuum. Not all composers shared the belief in modern music as an art form divorced from the “music-loving public,” as the works on this program demonstrate—particularly those whose writing focused on genres that depended on the public’s approval, like movie music.

Founded in the fall of 1990, Rembrandt Chamber Musicians features three of the most highly accomplished musicians in the Chicago area, including principal members of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. The ensemble’s expansive repertoire, ranging from historically informed performances of baroque classics to contemporary works by local composers, has consistently garnered high praise and recognition.

Since its inception, Rembrandt has actively commissioned fourteen new works and six arrangements by renowned composers from the Chicago area and beyond. In 2012 Rembrandt presented the only Chicago performance of Wynton Marsalis’ A Fiddler’s Tale, pairing it with Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du Soldat. In 2008 Rembrandt began The Mahler Project, a three-year retrospective of Schoenberg’s chamber arrangements of Mahler’s large symphonic works, receiving excellent reviews from the Chicago Tribune. In 2014 Rembrandt commissioned and premiered a new sonata for oboe and piano by GRAMMY Award winner and multi-instrumentalist Howard Levy as well as new works and arrangements by David Schrader, Sebastian Huydts, and Peter Labella. In 2017 Rembrandt presented the Midwest premiere of Dana Wilson’s Gold Mosaic and the world premiere of Sebastian Huydts’ Trio for oboe, viola, and piano.

Deeply committed to fostering chamber music education and appreciation, Rembrandt founded its highly acclaimed Annual High School Chamber Music Competition in 1995, an event that continues to draw participants from the Music Institute of Chicago, Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestras, Midwest Young Artists, Merit School of Music, and a variety of public and private schools throughout the state. Winning ensembles receive cash prizes, coaching sessions from Rembrandt musicians, and performance opportunities and participate in educational outreach projects for Chicago-area schools that lack an established music program.