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Summer Means Chestnut Hill Concerts

What is there to say about August? It’s hot; it’s humid; it signals that summer is ending, but all the news is not depressing. August on the shoreline means outstanding chamber music at the Chestnut Hill concerts, the series of four Friday–night performances at The Katharine Hepburn Cultural Arts Center (The Kate) in Old Saybrook. Chamber music is played by a small group of performers, an ensemble that would comfortably fit into a chamber rather than a large hall, hence its name.

This season, the concerts present a mixture of familiar names like Bach, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky along with others that might be new to audiences like contemporary composer John Novacek, whose “Rags for Violin and Piano” is on the program at the first concert on Friday, Aug. 3.

“The Novacek is lighthearted, tonal, and rhythmically fun,” said cellist Ronald Thomas, who has been artistic director of the series since l989.

Thomas added that violinist Steve Copes, one of the musicians performing the Novacek work, has performed the piece with the composer, also a pianist, himself.

Even among the more recognizable names on the program, there is some surprise. Thomas said Mozart’s “Quintet in E Flat Major for Horn and Strings,” on the Friday, Aug. 24 program, is a relatively rarely performed work.

“We’re doing it because we have Bill,” Thomas said, referring to well-known French hornist William Purvis, a Deep River resident on the faculty of the Yale School of Music.

According to Thomas, the instrumentation of the Mozart quintet, calling for two violas and one violin, is an unusual mix in chamber music. The larger size of the viola, tuned a fifth below the violin, makes it physically challenging to play.

“Old violas could be very big. You had to contort your body to get around them,” Thomas said.

Cindy Wu, who has appeared on several occasions in the Chestnut Hill series, plays both violin and viola.

“She is a very small person but she can really get herself around that viola,” Thomas said.

The Friday, Aug. 10 performance of Tchaikovsky’s string sextet “Souvenir of Florence” will also use two violas. Four of the musicians who make up the Amernet string quartet, Misha Vitenson and Franz Felkl on violin, Michael Klotz on viola, and Jason Calloway on cello, along with Thomas on cello and Chauncey Patterson on viola, make the ensemble into a six-person group. The string quartet along with the two added performers will play the concert again at the Music Mountain festival in Falls Village.

The Chestnut Hill program on Friday, Aug. 17 featuring Debussy’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano” and Dvorak’s “Piano Quintet in A Major,” will also have a performance at another venue, the Sebago-Long Lake Music Festival in Maine. Pianist Mihae Lee, the artistic director of the Essex Winter Series and a regular performer at the Chestnut Hill Series who is appearing on the program, is music director of the Maine Festival.

The Chestnut Hill series started its performances in a barn in Killingworth in l969 and moved to what was then the Hammonasset School in Madison (now the Madison Town Campus), and in succession to Andrews Memorial Hall in Clinton and the First Congregational Church in Madison before moving to The Kate in Old Saybrook in 2010. The move brought the performers and the audiences something that turns summer listening from sweat to sweetness: air conditioning. Thomas said it was so hot in the Madison church that performers fingers regularly slipped off keys and strings.

“It was very difficult. It just wore everybody out,” he recalled. “The move to The Kate really rejuvenated me. I was really getting kind of desperate.”

As is his custom, Thomas will preface the concert selections with his own particular introductions.

“The talks are a bit off the cuff, based on what I know,” he says. “There are already program notes and I don’t want to repeat them. I want my remarks to be a bit more personal.”

Each year Thomas recruits a blend of artists who have already performed at Chestnut Hill with newcomers to the series. Among the new performers this summer is Frank Huang, the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic, who will be part of the chamber group in the final concert on Friday, Aug. 24. Whether veterans of the series or first-time performers, all the artists have one thing in common.

“Everyone who comes is a good friend. We’ve all met before at [music] festivals,” Thomas said.

According to Lee, that friendship is a vital part of playing chamber music.

“The personal connection among the musicians is crucial since chamber music is such intimate and personal compared to orchestras,” she noted.

Often musicians have stayed at with Lee and Purvis, to whom Lee is married, in Deep River for the concert weekend, but this year the performers may have to move to other quarters. Lee’s daughter, Lili Thomas, and her two young children will be at the house. Thomas, an actress and singer, will be appearing in the Ivoryton Playhouse’s production of A Chorus Line during the month of August. That gives Ronald Thomas, who was once married to Lee and is Lili’s father, a non-musical bonus.

“I imagine I’ll get to spend more time with my grandchildren,” he said.

Chestnut Hill Concerts

Chestnut Hill Concerts brings chamber music to The Kate, 300 Main Street, Old Saybrook, on Fridays, Aug. 3, 10, 17, and 24. Tickets start at $35. For more information, visit www.chestnuthillconcerts.org.