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Event
Masterpieces! Musique du Jour Presents!
The Musicians
Page Smith, Baroque violoncello by Robert Brewer Young (Sentaraille à Berdot, France, 2011), after a Sanctus Seraphin instrument (Venice, 1730)
Tamara Friedman, Classical grand fortepiano by Kenneth Bakeman (Kirkland, 1980), after a Nannette Streicher instrument (Vienna, 1804)
The Program
Song without Words in D major, Op. 109 Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47)
Suite No. 3 in C major, BWV 1009 (1717-23) Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Sonata in F major for Fortepiano, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91)
K. 533/494 (1788/1786)
Sonata in G minor/major for Violoncello and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Fortepiano, Op. 5 No. 2 (1796)
Auf dem Wasser zu singen (To Sing on the Water), Franz Schubert (1797-1828)
D. 774 (arr. by Friedrich August Kummer)
About the Musicians
Page Smith is solo cellist of the Pacific Northwest Ballet and was principal cellist of the Northwest Chamber Orchestra for twenty-five years and the Auburn Symphony for ten yearsensembles with which she has frequently appeared as soloist. Page has also served as principal cellist of the Aspen Chamber Symphony and the New Jersey Symphony, and currently plays upon invitation with the Seattle Symphony and the Seattle Opera. She is one of this regions most beloved and trusted chamber musicians, performing with the Orcas Island Chamber Music Series, Music of Remembrance, Chamber Music Northwest, and the Mostly Nordic and Second City chamber music series.
Page especially enjoys playing the uniquely beautiful repertoire combining chorus and solo cello with St. Marks Compline Choir, Opus 7, Choral Arts Northwest, the St. Marks Cathedral Choir, Seattle Pro Musica, and the St. James Cathedral Choir.
Praised for the depth, wit, and humor of her performances (Seattle Times) and her exemplary musicianship and true flair! (Journal American), pianist Tamara Friedman attended the Oberlin Conservatory and Mannes College of Music, where she received her M.M. Music critic Morton Gold has observed that her playing of Mozart reaches my heart as well as my intellect ... she realized the drama inherent in the work while being as sensitive and even romantic where the music suggested passion. What more can one ask for, where such abundant detail is wed to such depth of feeling and affective intensity? Perfection. Bravo! opined John Bell Young, author of Brahms: A Listeners Guide.
Tamara has collaborated with such international artists as Stanley Ritchie, Jaap Schröder, and Max van Egmond, and appears with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock as Duo Amadeus. In the Pacific Northwest she has performed on the Seattle Camerata, Allegro Baroque and Beyond, Belle Arte, Early Music Guild, Gallery Concerts, and Mostly Nordic series and for the Governors Chamber Music Festival. She has been the featured performer in early piano workshops for Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA) and the Western Early Keyboard Association, and curates the collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century keyboard instruments on display at SEKM!the Skagit Early Keyboard Museum. Her summers are spent in Bath, Maine, where she also has a group of historic pianos and performs on the Kennebec Early Music Festival.
About the Instruments
When compared to a modern cello, Page Smiths fine replica of a Venetian Baroque Sanctus Seraphin instrument has a shorter and slightly more upright neck, a shorter fingerboard, a shorter and thinner bass-bar, a thinner sound post, a lower and differently shaped bridge, and no end-pin. Most important, it has gut, rather than steel strings. The result is a warmer, broader sound that allows vibrato to be employed only as an ornament, to highlight significant notes, and is quite perfect for the rich music of Bach and Beethoven. The string instruments of Sanctus Seraphin (16991776) were inspired to the Cremonese luthier Nicolò Amati. An original Sanctus Seraphin cello set a record when it sold for nearly $780,000 back in 2018. The lighter-weight Baroque bow with its pointed tip lends greater agility to the music.
Nannette Streicher, née Stein (17691833), who learned the secrets of her craft from her father, the seminal fortepiano inventor Johann Andreas Stein in Augsburg, was one of the most influential innovators and makers in the early history of the piano. Stein developed a highly touch-sensitive piano action that flipped rather than pushed the hammers upwards to strike the strings, and eventually became known as the Viennese action. After her father's death in 1792, Nannette, who was a good pianist herself, took over the business, and the following year she married the pianist Johann Andreas Streicher (17611833), who ran the front office while Nannette was to be found in the shop with the workers transforming wood into pianos. In 1794 the couple moved to Vienna, the music-crazed capital of the Hapsburg empire, where they founded a workshop that eventually turned out 50 to 65 handcrafted grand pianos each year, providing instruments to the likes of Beethoven and Goethe. Indeed, such was her friendship with Beethoven that for eighteen months beginning in 1817 she assumed considerable responsibility for his domestic arrangements, including buying his groceries, doing his laundry, and mending his socks! Beethoven called her his good Samaritan.
The concerts Nannette organized, first in her apartment, then from 1812 in a piano salon next-door to the Streicher showrooms, made an important contribution to Viennese musical life. The hall seated 300 and offered young artists welcome opportunities to perform. The replica of her 1804 model that Tamara Friedman is playing is an all-wooden instrument (no metal bracing) of five-and-a-half octavesNannette eventually expanded her piano by another octavethat is double strung throughout. Steel strings lend clarity to its upper register, while resounding brass strings permit its bass timbres to range from warm and full to growling and nasty, depending on how the pianist activates its tiny leather-covered hammers. The overall effect is a lighter, brighter, more colorful sound than the homogeneous modern piano is designed to produce.
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LocationQueen Anne Christian Church (View)
1316 3rd Ave W
Seattle, WA 98119
United States
Categories
| Minimum Age: 7 |
| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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Contact
Accessibility
Wheelchair accessible
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