Department of Music

• Thursday, April 2nd, 2009
• Old Cabell Hall
• 8:00pm
• $20 / $10 students / 5 ARTS$ / Free under 18

IN THE FIFTH AND FINAL CONCERT OF THE UNIVERISTY OF VIRGINIA’S Chamber Music Series for the 2008 through 2009 season, artist’s Amanda Balestrieri, soprano, and Alan Cox, flute assisted by pianist Gabriel Dobner will present an evening of sonority of words and sentiments expressed through the music of Saint-Saens, Strauss, Delibes, Caplet, Laitman, Ibert and Martinů on Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 8pm in Old Cabell Hall.

The University of Virginia’s Chamber Music Series concludes its season with a concert on Thursday, April 2, 2009 at 8 pm in Old Cabell Hall. Featuring the dynamic and impressive skills of critically acclaimed soprano Amanda Balestrieri, CUSO principal and composer Alan Cox, flute, and guest artist Gabriel Dobner, piano, the evening’s musical offerings provide stimulating sonorities of words in compositions by Camille Saint-Saëns, Richard Strauss, Léo Delibes, de Roxlo, André Caplet, Lori Laitman, Jacques Ibert, Bohuslov Martinů and Maurice Ravel.

Educated in England, Amanda Balestrieri received her degrees from the Associated Board of Royal Schools and Music in voice and piano. She has performed in Oxford, London, Italy and with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Currently making her home in the United States, she continues her concert and recital work with premier groups such as the National Symphony Orchestra, Four Nations Ensemble and the St. Thomas Choir. Besides performing major baroque operas, 20th century and contemporary works, she has also received critical acclaim for her performances of French chamber works for voice and flute. She has appeared at the Blackfriars Shakespeare Theatre in Saunton. Bob Waters of The Washington Post proclaims: “Not only is Balestrieri’s voice unusually versatile, but the timbre of her instrument is resplendent.”

A faculty member of James Madison University, pianist Gabriel Dobner began his career at the Chicago Music College of Roosevelt University. Living in Germany for eight years, he received the German Academic Exchange Scholarship and the special accompanist prize in the International Hans Pfitzner Lieder Competition, as well as established himself as a premier collaborative artist. He has performed regularly with international known vocalists and instrumentalists, such as Cornelia Kallisch and Allan Vogel. His recordings have garnered critical acclaim. The West German Radio in Cologne referred to him as a “master among Lieder pianists”. He has also performed in the United States, Canada, Japan and Spain.

Completing the trio of the evening’s performers, flutist Alan Cox is a UVA faculty member, principal of the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra, and member of the Albemarle Ensemble. Currently, he also serves as principal flute of the American Sinfonietta and is a member of New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra. As a composer, he acknowledges guidance from such diverse teachers as Vincent Persichetti, Lester Trimble, Elliott Carter, Roger Sessions, and Vladimir Ussachevsky, but considers himself primarily self-taught. His output ranges from solo and chamber works to a song cycle for soprano and chamber orchestra, "Illuminations", set to texts by the poet Arthur Rimbaud, to a piece for large orchestra, "Six Orchestral Images after Magritte", musical depictions of paintings by the surrealist painter Rene Magritte.

Featuring these amazingly talented performers, the evening’s concert examines the effect words have on composers. Captivated by Victor Hugo’s poem, Saint-Saëns personifies the song of love in Une flûte invisible, a pastoral scene painted with the broad stroke of a French Impressionist composer. Inspired by Hugo’s poetry, André Caplet gives life to the invisible flute through Viens! Une flûte invisible soupier. In depicting the voice of the flute, Caplet creates a dense texture of the instruments which ultimately resolves into the song of the lovers. Although Léo Delibes also set the poem to music, the concert will present Le Rossignol, giving a warm, expressive voice in the voice, piano and flute obbligato.

Influenced by the poems which inspired Rimski-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, Ravel crafts “La flûte enchantée” into an expressive recitation of a poem, reflecting the fluctuations of the human voice and capturing the intimate, sensual kiss left on a lover’s cheek in the metaphor of the flute obbligato. Intrigued by Victor Segalen’s Stele collection, Ibert recalls the text’s Eastern mysticism through shaded melodies and imagery of Tahiti and China in Deux Stèle Orientées. Whether in the rich, charming Strauss leider selections or the surprise of DeRoxio’s Spanish Suite, the evening’s offerings give voice to the words through music and the instruments as in Martinů’s Sonata for Flute.