After years of barn-burning chamber music magic, it was a tough decision for the Cedar Valley Chamber Music’s Artistic Director Hunter Capoccioni to bail on their current plans which included a world-premiere commission to commemorate their 15th anniversary.
Instead, the CVCM plans to draw on their musical networks with performers who have “strong connections” to Iowa.
“In all cases, the number of extremely talented musicians I have met in my lifetime that have called Iowa ‘home’ for some period of their life never ceases to amaze me,” Capoccioni says.
The cosmopolitan diversity of the CVCM’s summer festival will astonish those who tune in for this year’s free live-streamed concert series.
About the lineup
Sunday, July 19
The CVCM mix for Sunday afternoon’s 3 p.m. CT matinee on July 19 presents the ensemble Duo Pangelica. Current California residents and members of the American Harp Quartet, Ellie Choate, and former Cedar Falls native Jacquelyn Venter, offer an amazing performance of works specially written for or transcribed and unpublished for harp duet. This rare double-harp-concert includes a tantalizing combination of works by Jacques Press, Bernard Andres, Russell Howland, Maurice Ravel, Alain Margoni, and Luigi Boccherini.
Monday, July 20
Zipping to the other coast on Monday evening, the program features the Orlando Piano Trio at 7:30 p.m. CT The ensemble includes violinist Ross Monroe Winters, cellist and Cedar Rapids native David Bjella, with Hannah Sun at the keyboard.
Their From Florida with Love performance stages two Russian works from separate centuries. Rachmaninoff’s ebullient one-movement Trio Élégiaque No. 1 in g minor opens the set. And Shostakovich’s tragic Piano Trio No. 2 in e minor, Op. 67, memorializes the sudden death of his cherished friend musicologist Ivan Sollertinsky, and the WWII discovery on the eastern front of death camps and other atrocities left behind by the Nazis.
Friday, July 24
On Friday night, July 24 at 7:30 p.m. CT, the CVCM Festival commemorates the Beethoven’s 250th birthday anniversary with Beethoven at 250 Years and 9000 Miles from Kuala Lampur. Timothy Peters, former Iowa City native who now serves as principal second with the Malaysia Philharmonic, teams up with Malaysian pianist Loo Bang Hean to celebrate Beethoven’s birthday.
The duo will present several Beethoven sonatas, including the captivating and buoyant Sonata No. 2 in A, Op. 12 No. 2 that was dedicated to the well-respected composer of opera, conductor, and his teacher, Antonio Salieri. The duo will also team up to perform Beethoven’s energetic and thrilling Sonata No. 4 in a minor, Op. 23 that was dedicated to patron Count Moritz von Fries.
To learn more details about the 2020 Cedar Valley Chamber Music Festival’s virtual live-streaming online concerts, please see their website at www.cedarvalleymusic.org.
Editor's Note: A previous version of this story announced more concerts, some of which had to be rescheduled due to COVID-19.
