The Falmouth Chamber Players Orchestra will offer a special performance for the whole family this weekend—-a pair of concerts featuring light classical, jazz, and popular music performed by variety of chamber music ensembles. The Musicale! is the first in an annual series designed to appeal to a wide audience and to showcase the individual players and instruments of the orchestra—-and share with the community some very entertaining music.
There will be something for every taste, from solo flute and solo piano to woodwind and string quartets—-and even a bass recorder trio. Artistic director John Yankee and the musicians will introduce each piece with some interesting information about it.
The concerts are Saturday, January 28, at 7:30 PM, and Sunday, January 29, at 3 PM at Cape Cod Conservatory, 60 Highfield Drive, in Falmouth. Suggested donation is $10 for adults and $5 for those 16 and under.
The orchestra has invited several guest performers to join them in the Musicale!
Pianist Stephanie Weaver, director of the Cape Cod Conservatory, will play Frederic Chopin’s Etudes Op. 10 No. 3 (Tristesse) and Op. 25, No. 12 (Ocean). Tristesse (sadness), written in 1832, is a slow cantabile. Chopin considered it one of the most beautiful melodies he wrote. “Ocean” is a fast-moving series of rising and falling arpeggios in various chord progressions.
Recorder player Jan Elliot, Julian Cole (viola da gamba) and Jeff Kaufmann (recorder), will play a Trio Sonata by Hotteterre with Fritz Sonnichsen on keyboard. Elliot, Cole, and Kaufmann will also perform Orlando Gibbons’ “Fantasia for Bass Recorders.”
Flutist Betsey Edwards will play several works for flute, including a solo by Honeggar, “The Goat,” a flute sonata by Handel, with Fritz Sonnichsen on harpsichord, and a Bach sonata for two flutes, with flutist Karen Michelac and Laura Tutino Sonnichsen on harpsichord.
Young violist Guy Knapp will join his parents, orchestra members Patricia and Robert Knapp, in some viola/violin trios by Telemann.
Orchestra members Lorrie Hassen (flute), Melanie Hayne (oboe), Kate Housman (French horn), and Beth Giuffrida (double bass) will perform a lively “Three Blind Mice Scherzo.”
Popular music: “The Entertainer” by Scott Joplin, “Londonderry Air,” and Irving Berlin’s “Alexander’s Ragtime Band,” will be played with spirit by members Joyce Gindra (oboe), Bob Sanderson (bass clarinet), Dick Payne (flute), and Diane Aittaniemi (clarinet).
Laura (violin) and Fritz (piano) Sonnichsen, who are vice-president and president of the orchestra, respectively, will play a Schubert sonatina, and, with Karen Michelac on harpsichord, Laura will also perform a violin sonata by Corelli.
Several orchestra members will offer solos: Violist Laura Craciun will play the Prelude to Cello Suite No. 1 by Bach; Clarinetist Henry Duckham will play the lyrical “Canzonetta” by Gabriel Pierne; and clarinetist Rachel Walker will play a work of her own composition. Kate Housman (French horn) will play the horn solo from Wagner’s opera, “Seigfried.”
And there will be an oboe quartet by Mozart with Melanie Hayn (oboe), Laura Sonnichsen (violin), Fritz Sonnichsen (viola), and Beth Giuffrida (double bass).
A chamber ensemble of the FCPO performed at Highfield Hall in December 2011.The Falmouth Chamber Players Orchestra, now in its fifth season, is a volunteer orchestra made up of skilled amateurs, professionals, and students. The group seeks to provide live music to the community at an affordable cost.
The next orchestra concerts are March 24 and 25. The program will include Corelli’s Concerto Grosso No. 2 in F, selections from Mendelssohn’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with the Woman’s Chorus of the Falmouth Chamber Chorale, and Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 in D.
For more information about the January concerts contact Fritz Sonnichsen at 508-274-2632 or the Cape Cod Conservatory in Falmouth at 508-540-0611.
Notes on The Arts 