28th annual Chamber Music Festival to celebrate art of Brahms, Dvorak

OGUNQUIT - Ogunquit Performing Arts will present the 26th Annual Chamber Music Festival on June 3 and 10.

The first concert by Boston Chamber Music Piano Quartet will take place Friday, June 3 at 7:30 p.m. The second concert is Friday, June 10 at 7:30 p.m. and will feature the

Boston Chamber Music String Sextet. Both concerts will take place at the

Dunaway Center, 23 School Street, Ogunquit.

Since its inception, the Chamber Music Festival has always been a very special occasion for OPA, and in recent years, has been an on-going partnership with Boston Chamber Music. The Boston-based players are selected and led by international cellist Bruck Coppock, who every year puts together a special ensemble for the Ogunquit concerts, unique to OPA. This year, their programming explores the lush, romantic and powerful music of Johannes Brahms and Antonín Dvořák, adjusting the ensembles to suit the specific selections.

On June 3, the Boston Chamber Music Piano Quartet will play: Dvořák Piano Quartet in Eb, Opus 87, Brahms Piano Quartet in g minor, Op 25. The players will include:

Matthew Vera, violinist, is known for his versatility as a soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral leader. A graduate of the New England Conservatory, Matthew also enjoys a freelance career in the Boston area, and has been a member of the Boston Philharmonic’s first violin section since 2010.

Jason Fisher, viola, is a graduate of Peabody Conservatory, and the Longy School of Music. A Carnegie Hall Fellow and a Peabody Singapore Fellow, he has toured Europe, Asia, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic and has given concerts at Vienna Musikverein, Singapore Esplanade, The Kennedy Center, and Carnegie Hall.

Bruce Coppock has enjoyed a career as a cellist, teacher and arts executive for over 40 years. He was cellist, co-founder and executive director of the Boston Chamber Music Society; principal cellist of the Handel & Haydn Society; cellist of the Boston Musica Viva. He was Chair of the Music Division of the Boston Conservatory and subsequently chair of both the chamber music and orchestral studies departments at New England Conservatory.

Randall Hodgkinson, pianist, has achieved recognition as a winner of the International American Music Competition for pianists sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. He has appeared frequently as featured soloist with major orchestras including those of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. He is currently on the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, and the Longy School of Music in Cambridge.

On June 10, the Boston Chamber Music String Sextet will play Brahms String Sextet in G Major, Opus 36, and Dvořák String Sextet in A Major, Opus 48.

The Sextet players will include Matthew Vera, violin, Amy Sims, violin, Samuel Kelder, viola, Daniel Orsen, viola, Velleda Miragias, cello, and Bruce Coppock, cello.

Johannes Brahms, (1833-1897) German composer and pianist of the Romantic period, wrote symphonies, concerti, chamber music, piano works, choral compositions, and more than 200 songs. Brahms was the great master of symphonic and sonata style in the second half of the 19th century. Brahms’s sweeping music complemented and counteracted the rapid growth of Romantic individualism in the second half of the 19th century. An admirer of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Schumann, Brahms was desirous not of reproducing old styles but of infusing the language of his own time with his own constructive power.

Antonín Dvořák, (1841-1904) was the first Bohemian composer to achieve worldwide recognition, noted for turning folk material into 19th-century Romantic music. In 1875 Dvořák was awarded a state grant by the Austrian government, and this award brought him into contact with Johannes Brahms with whom he formed a close and fruitful friendship. Brahms not only gave him valuable technical advice but also found him an influential publisher in Fritz Simrock, and it was with his firm’s publication of the Moravian Duets (composed 1876) and the Slavonic Dances (1878) for piano duet that Dvořák first attracted worldwide attention to himself and to his country's music.

Tickets for these performances are $15 and may be purchased online www.ogunquitperformingarts.org or in advance at these Ogunquit locations: Cricket's Corner, Dunaway Center, Ogunquit Welcome Center. --- or at the door for $20.

Free parking for ticketed concert-goers behind the Dunaway Center. Socially distanced seating; masks recommended.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: 28th annual Chamber Music Festival to celebrate art of Brahms, Dvorak