March 22, 2001 – Classical music lovers have an opportunity to hear the best of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra perform on Saturday, April 14, at the Reichhold Center for the Arts. And that is not just promotional hype.
The New Jersey Symphony Orchestra Chamber Players will appear as a Birch Forum presentation. The ensemble is an octet, seven of whose members comprise the "first chairs" or "principals" – the designated leaders – of the violin, viola, cello, double bass, clarinet, horn and bassoon sections of the orchestra. The eighth member is the principal second violinist.
The NJSO, founded in 1922 and tracing its roots to 1846, is the resident orchestra of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. But it also functions as a state orchestra, presenting more than 150 classical and pops concerts a year throughout New Jersey, as well as performing nationally and internationally.
Various chamber ensembles made up of orchestra members perform additionally – in fact, publicist Brian Skwirut says, "They have been doing so practically for the entire history of our orchestra." The Chamber Players is one such group; its makeup includes the four musicians who also perform as the NJSO String Quartet.
Who'll be performing
The octet members are:
– Violinist Eric Wyrick, who began studying with Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School at the age of 6. The principal violinist of the NJSO, he was formerly concertmaster of the American Symphony Orchestra, Bard Festival Orchestra and L'Opera Français New York. He performs on a violin made in 1713 by J.B. Roggieri.
– Violinist Francine Storck, NJSO principal second violinist, who studied at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music. She has also performed with the Santa Fe and New York City Operas; with the Joffrey, Alvin Ailey and New Jersey Ballets; and at New York's Radio City Music Hall and on Broadway.
– Violist Frank Foerster, who moved from Germany to the United States to study at the Juilliard, where he earned his doctorate. The first violist to win the Artists International Auditions in New York, he performed under Herbert Von Karajan with the Berlin Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic.
– Cellist Jonathan Spitz, one of the leading cellists in the New York area. He has performed at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall as well as extensively throughout the Americas and Europe and toured Southeast Asia with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.
– Clarinetist Karl Herman, who studied at Carnegie-Mellon University and the New England Conservatory of Music. He has also performed with the New York Philharmonic and the American Symphony Orchestra, as well as with the American Ballet Theater, New York City Opera National Company and Joffrey Ballet.
– Bassoonist Robert Wagner, a Juilliard master's music graduate. He also performs with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Boehm Quintette and the American Wind Quintet.
– Horn player Lucinda-Lewis, who holds undergraduate and graduate performance degrees from the Manhattan School of Music. She has also been principal horn with the Brooklyn Symphony, the New York's Chamber Opera Theatre, the Jerusalem Symphony and the Israel Philharmonic.
– Bassist Paul Harris, who studied at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the University of Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. He has also played with the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera and has recorded for Paramount and Universal Pictures.
The Chamber Players is one of two classical chamber music groups the Birch Forum is bringing to the Reichhold Center this year. The second is a Russian ensemble that will perform in Puerto Rico in June at the annual Casals Festival. This year, as last, the Birch Forum has arranged for the festival to include a "repeat performance" by one chamber group on St. Thomas as an official part of the festival.
The New Jersey octet is traveling directly from New Jersey to St. Thomas and back without playing anywhere else in the region, Skwirut said. How the group was contracted by the Birch Forum is a classical Virgin Islands story – of family connections.
According to Trudie Prior, wife of Birch Forum president Cornelius Prior, the couple had flown into Newark Airport on Mother's Day last year and was spending a few hours with a cousin of hers who lives in Newark. He was showing them the sights, and one of the places he pointed to with pride was the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. "He has connections with the symphony," she said. One thing led to another, and eventually the Chamber Players was contracted to come to St. Thomas.
What they'll be playing
The program that the Chamber Players will perform on April 14 has been presented by the group once before, Skwirut said, last December in West Orange, N.J. It consists of Mozart's String Quartet in D major, K. 155 (134a), Serenata-Invano for Clarinet, Bassoon, Horn, Cello and Double Bass by Carl Nielsen; and Schubert's Octet in F major, Op. 166 (D. 803).
In the program notes, Richard E. Rodda says that Mozart composed the quartet – the first in a series of six – in 1772 at the age of 16 during a trip with his father from their Salzburg home to Milan for the debut of an opera he had contracted two years earlier to compose for the Teatro Regio Ducale. He wrote this first quartet to "kill time" in a dreary town along the way, opting for three movements without the traditional minuet. Rodda describes the finale as "a tiny rondo of slight matter which serves as a reminder that Mozart was only a teenager."
Danish composer Carl Nielsen (1865-1931) studied cornet, trumpet and trombone from childhood. In the symphonies he later composed, he wrote passages "deliberately intended to challenge the technique of the individual instruments" and "tried to capture something of their distinctive characteristics," Rodda writes. Asked to compose something light for a wind and string ensemble, he created Serenata-Invano – "Serenade in Vain." In tongue-in-cheek notes, Nielsen himself described the work as being about some musicians trying to entice a maiden to appear on her balcony. They play something showy; when that doesn't work, they try a languorous strain; failing again, they give up and depart, playing a little march just for fun.
The Schubert octet was commissioned in 1824 by the chief steward to Vienna's Archduke Rudolph as a septet, but Schubert received permission to add a second violin. Modeled closely on Beethoven's popular E-flat Septet of the time, it shares that work's six movements and generally cheerful character – with the introduction to the finale the only somber moments "amid the soaring high spirits that count among Schubert's most endearing qualities," Rodda writes. "The presence in the Octet of both a Classical minuet and a Romantic scherzo points to Schubert's pivotal historical position, at the meeting place of two musical eras."
How to get tickets
The concert will begin at 8 p.m. Tickets are $35 in the covered section and $15 in the open-air seating. To purchase and pick up tickets in advance, stop by the Reichhold box office, the University of the Virgin Islands St. Thomas campus bookstore, Parrot Fish Music, Modern Music/Havensight or Krystal & Gifts Galore on St. Thomas; or at Connections on St. John. For charge card purchases, call the box office at 693-1559.
To place an order online using a charge card (Amex, MasterCard, Visa), go to the Reichhold web site at www.reichholdcenter.com/live/order/html.
The Birch Forum is making complimentary tickets available to music students, choirs, bands and other interested students, according to Reichhold publicist Dionne Carty. Parents and guardians should contact their children's school principals or music t
eachers for details.
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