Chamber Orchestra of Sarasota Celebrates Chopin: Feb 29

February 9, 2024 – Sarasota

The Chamber Orchestra of Sarasota will continue its 2024 season on Thursday, February 29 at 7:30pm at the First Presbyterian Church of Sarasota located at 2050 Oak Street. The program, conducted by music director Robert Vodnoy and titled “Celebrating Chopin”, features prize-winning pianist Matthew Graybil. 

The New Yorker called Graybil “an exceptional young artist” and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune praised him for the “maturity of his interpretations and the eloquence of his presentation.” Graybil performed for Artist Series Concerts in November 2023 and returns to Sarasota for this concert to perform Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Minor. The concert is sponsored by The Chopin Project, The Marie Beckman Declaration of Trust, The Raymund Foundation, and Stan and Margaret Krol.

Frédéric Chopin was a Polish composer and virtuoso pianist of the Romantic period whose poetic genius expressed itself through a piano technique without equal in his generation. His music is a mainstay of the modern pianist’s repertoire. Chopin’s “Piano Concerto No. 2” was composed when the composer was only 19 years old. The Chamber Orchestra and Mr. Graybil will perform the work in a brilliant arrangement for piano and strings in commemoration of the 175^th anniversary of the death of the composer, who died at the young age of 39.

Chopin is one of Matthew Graybil’s favorite composers. Graybil said: “Chopin gave a warmth and vitality to the piano as an instrument that is unsurpassed and his extraordinary sense of harmony with its many subtleties speaks to me on a deep level. Also, his music is a perfect platform for a performer to express their sense of individuality. If one looks at his own annotations in his student’s sheet music, you can see that he was constantly changing details and evolving his own thoughts about the music. For a performer, that is refreshing and a constant source of inspiration.” 

Chopin performed this concerto as a solo piece, as a chamber work for piano and strings, and as a concerto with full orchestra accompaniment. This performance with strings highlights the lyricism and intimacy of the concerto.  

The program will open with “Symphony Concertante in G Major” by Joseph Bologna Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Soloists for this performance will be the Chamber Orchestra of Sarasota’s associate concertmaster Cindi Qi and her father David Qi, who is also a member of the Chamber Orchestra. Chevalier de Saint-Georges was an 18^th century French violinist, composer, and swordsman. He was the first classical composer of African descent to attain widespread acclaim in European music. Born in Guadeloupe to a Creole mother and wealthy white plantation owner father, and educated in France, his talents in fencing and music brought him fame and success. His life was brilliantly depicted in the 2022 biographical film “Chevalier.”

The program also includes Samuel Adler’s “Concertino No. 3” for string orchestra. American composer, conductor, and author Samuel Adler was born into a Jewish family in 1928 in Mannheim, Germany. His father was a synagogue cantor and his mother a pianist. Adler’s father was imprisoned in the Netherlands following the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, and the family fled to the United States in 1939. Adler composed over 400 works, and was a professor of music at both the Eastman School of Music and the Juilliard School. “Concertino No. 3” was commissioned by the Missouri Chapter of the American String Teachers Association, written in the spring of 1993 and premiered at that organization’s convention in January of 1994. The energetic first movement is followed by a lyrical middle movement. The finale, marked “fast and wild” builds into a full-blown tarantella. 

Vodnoy said: “This program includes a mainstay of the Romantic piano repertoire, a Classical work by a composer of color, and a virtuoso modern work by a living American composer, helping us fulfill our mission and making for a varied and rewarding evening of music. The chamber orchestra repertoire is extraordinary and unique and we look forward to seeing our regular audience and new friends at the concert. The First Presbyterian Church is a glorious place in which to perform and listen to music, with its beautiful mission-style architecture and glowing acoustics.”

Tickets for the concert are $39 for adults and $5 for students and can be purchased online on the chamber orchestra’s website. The box office opens at 6:30pm. For more information about this and other concerts by the Chamber Orchestra, visit the orchestra’s website at www.chamberorchestrasarasota.org or call 219-928-8665.

The Chamber Orchestra of Sarasota, founded in 2017, is one of the few professional chamber orchestras in the State of Florida. Its mission is to provide opportunities for diverse audiences and performers to experience the unique repertoire of a chamber orchestra, employing the finest musicians in the Sarasota area and performing in small and intimate venues. The season concludes on March 21 with “Mozart + Haydn” featuring internationally acclaimed violinist George Maxman performing Mozart’s dazzling Violin Concerto No. 5 in A Major and Haydn’s Symphony No. 83 (The Hen).

Music Director Robert Vodnoy made his professional debut as a conductor in 1975 with the Southwest Michigan Symphony Orchestra, which he led as music director for 30 years. He was Music Director of the Northwest Indiana Symphony (1976-1996), the Whiting Park Festival Orchestra (2000-present), the Huron Symphony (2010-2015) and has guest conducted orchestras throughout the United States, and in Europe, Latin America, and the Pacific Rim. He was Director of Orchestras/Professor of Strings and Music History at Northern State University from 2005-2018. He holds a BM summa cum laude and MM in composition from Hartt College of the University of Hartford, and a DM in Conducting from Indiana University. He and his wife Kayla reside in Venice, Florida and Valparaiso, Indiana.