Press
2023
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with Isidore String Quartet
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with Brigid Coleridge of the Merz Trio
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with Terry Sweeney of Sandbox Percussion
2022
Special Feature with Mark Dover, clarinetist of the Imani Winds
Listen to Nathan Cone’s interview with SACMS current president Allyson Dawkins and past president Nancy Shivers about our 80th Season opening concert.
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with the Parker Quartet
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with Sharon Isbin
2021
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with the Kenari Quartet
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with Wu Han
2020
A nimble, well-tuned V8
By Mike Greenberg – Incident Light publish date March 2, 2020
The trouble with perfection is that there’s really not much a critic can say about it other than to remark about its… um… perfection. Consider, for example, the British ensemble VOCES8, which is a more or less perfect name for an ensemble of eight voices. Presented by the San Antonio Chamber Music Society, the troupe appeared March 1 in Temple Beth-El.
Listen to Nathan Cone’s interview with Jane Key about the upcoming VOCES8 concert
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with Kari Landry of the Akropolis Reed Quintet
2019
Between the shadows, a glow
By Mike Greenberg – Incident Light publish date November 14, 2019
The concert opened with one of the 20th century’s most compelling testaments of grief, terror, violence. The dark mood was broken by one of the 18th century’s warmest expressions of joy and peace.
Dance to the music, and vice versa
By Mike Greenberg – Incident Light publish date October 8, 2019
Searching for a word to convey the distinctive character of the baroque orchestra Apollo’s Fire and its artistic director, Jeannette Sorrell, I settled on “presence” – the quality of fully inhabiting the present time, the present place, the present action, even the present body.
Listen to Barry Brake’s interview with Jeannette Sorrell of Apollo’s Fire
Old school, new school
By Mike Greenberg – Incident Light publish date May 5, 2019
Last week brought two chamber music concerts with very different points of view, but equivalent pleasures.
Pleasing and challenging
By Mike Greenberg – Incident Light publish date March 14, 2019
The year is still fairly young, but it’s safe to bet that the new-music ensemble Eighth Blackbird gave one of the most engaging and ear-opening concerts of 2019, March 10 in Temple Beth-El for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society.
Remembering Tal
By Mike Greenberg – Incident Light publish date February 1, 2019
No collaborative relationship in the arts is quite comparable to that between a composer and a performer. The fruits of several such relationships proved fetching in two recent performances, by the Cavatina Duo (Jan 27) and pianist Viktor Valkov (Jan. 20).
2018
‘. . . men whose helmets now lie scattered’
By Mike Greenberg – Incident Light publish date November 14, 2018
It is paradoxical – or perhaps not – that the ugliest and most horrific experiences in life can inspire transcendent, healing beauty. A remarkable pairing of music with the spoken word made for a solemn, sometimes harrowing Veteran’s Day commemoration, Nov. 11 in Temple Beth-El, thanks to the San Antonio Chamber Music Society.
Lots of music from the new world
By Mike Greenberg – Incident Light publish date March 10, 2018
Music made in America figured prominently on concerts this week by the American Brass Quintet (March 4) and the San Antonio Symphony (March 9).
2017
Homecoming & other returns
Both of San Antonio’s most venerable presenting organizations opened their seasons in the past week. The Tuesday Musical Club has been around since 1901, but its Artist Series is just 95 years old. It opened with a collaboration by two local products in the early stages of significant careers, cellist Christine Lamprea and pianist Daniel Anastasio, Oct. 10 in Laurel Heights United Methodist Church. Then the San Antonio Chamber Music Society launched its 75th season on Oct. 15 with a concert in Temple Beth-El by guitarist Sharon Isbin and the Pacifica String Quartet.
An odd mix, perfectly melded
A mostly French program played by the top-drawer (if slightly oddball) Les Amies Trio, based in New York, made for a perfect afternoon on the San Antonio Chamber Music Society concert series, Feb. 26 in Temple Beth-El.
Les Amies Trio Captivates With The Music Of France
By Texas Public Radio publish date March 4, 2017
The Les Amies Trio- a collaboration of artists with a sense of purpose, a sense of class, and a sense of humor, graced the San Antonio Chamber Music Society’s 74th season with a performance last Sunday, February 26th, 2017 at Temple Beth-El.
2016
Three Danes, one Norwegian, all polish
The supremely polished Danish String Quartet made its San Antonio debut with a landmark work of the 20th century, a fascinating piece from the present year, and a set of arrangements of Nordic folk songs of uncertain vintage. The concert, Oct. 23 in Temple Beth-El, opened the 74th season of the San Antonio Chamber Music Society.
Purrs like a kitten
The Dover Quartet, in its first appearance on the San Antonio Chamber Music Society series, called to mind one of those absurdly expensive Italian sports cars, combining top-drawer craft, nimbleness and luxury in equal measure. (One assumes, however, that the musicians – violinists Joel Link and Bryan Lee, violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt and cellist Camden Shaw – will spend less time in the mechanic’s shop.)
Sounds from China, familiar and strange
The superb Shanghai Quartet returned to town on Feb. 28 with pipa (Chinese lute) virtuoso Wu Man and a program that leaned heavily to music by Chinese composers. The lone exception: Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, in one of the most luminous Beethoven quartet performances I can recall.
Round trip, Canada to Brazil
Concerts in recent days by the SOLI Chamber Ensemble and the Canada-based Gryphon Trio took Las Américas Music Festival to geographical extremes, with the world premiere of a delicious work by the Brazilian composer-singer Clarice Assad and two interesting pieces by Canadian composers.
2015
Acquaintance and reacquaintance
Strangely, for a prolific composer of great importance, Ernst Krenek is almost never heard from on concert programs hereabouts. The Zemlinsky Quartet from the Czech Republic mitigated the drought with a performance of Krenek’s String
Quartet No. 7, centerpiece of a program that also held works by Mendelssohn and Janáček, for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society on Nov. 8 in Temple Beth-El.
There will always be an England
Many years ago, I took a Caribbean cruise aboard Queen Elizabeth II, then the flagship of the storied Cunard Line. One evening a dinner companion, perusing the menu, commented invidiously about the virtues of English cooking relative to the French variety. Our unflappable (of course) English waiter observed dryly (of course) that the rival French Line had recently scrapped its whole passenger fleet, while Cunard of England was still going strong. There’s something to be said for the staying power of sheer competence, executing consistently without flaw, even if the results might not fully arouse one’s passions.
The strange in dialog with the strange
Some indisputably great musical works are so strange and idiosyncratic that a first hearing can puzzle — but also fascinate — even the most adventurous listeners. What on earth was that?
2014
A rare treat – chamber music from Italy
Most string quartets talk a blue streak (musically speaking) in German and are fluent in French, Russian, Hungarian, Czech and American, as well. Italian? Not so much, at least not in music after the baroque era, when the Italians ruled the roost. So it was a rare treat to hear an all-Italian program (without a baroque item in the bunch) played by the visiting Quartetto di Cremona, Nov. 16 in Temple Beth-El for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society.
Chamber music, high-minded and not
Somewhat odd programs, well played by the visiting Brentano String Quartet and the local Olmos Ensemble, were on the chamber-music bill for Sunday and Monday, respectively.
The Brentano may be remembered for a superb 2006 concert of landmark works that ranged from deep to deeper, comprising Schubert’s agitated “Quartettsatz,” Shostakovich’s mournful Quartet No. 15 and Beethoven’s Quartet in A Minor, with its slow movement a portrait of debilitating illness and recovery.
Romanticism, morning to dusk
The Escher String Quartet of New York visited on Sunday with elegant, somewhat contained accounts of works representing Romanticism in morning (Robert Schumann), mid-afternoon (Antonín Dvořák) and dusk (Alban Berg). The San Antonio Chamber Music Society presented the concert in Temple Beth-El.
San Antonio Chamber Music Society | Celebrating 71 Seasons
Seventy-one years ago, Dr. Eric Sorantin, an accomplished Viennese musician, established the San Antonio Chamber Music Society (www.sacms.org). The website describes the group’s humble beginnings: “The first concerts were held in the west wing of the Municipal Auditorium. Founding members provided oriental rugs and other furnishings to create the proper setting for the programs. Guest artists quickly grew from local to regional to national and international in prominence.”
2013
A feast of chamber music, new and old
The American Brass Quintet’s concert, a rare foray into the brass repertoire for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society, ranged from the 16th century to the near-present. One of the troupe’s trumpeters, Raymond Mase, created idiomatic arrangements of Renaissance vocal material, three madrigals by Luca Marenzio and five chansons by Josquin des Prés. These sounded wonderful in the airy acoustics of Temple Beth-El, even if the spacious sound took a little of the bite away from Josquin’s familiar “El Grillo.”
Rigor in action, from Mozart to Miles
A few minutes before the Ebène Quartet began playing a superb concert on April 14, a subscriber and a board member of the sponsoring San Antonio Chamber Music Society conducted a frank exchange of views in the Temple Beth-El lobby. Their discussion concerned the propriety of the program’s second half, described as “Jazz and Pop Standards, re-imagined by the Ebène Quartet.” The subscriber fervently hoped the fall from classical graces would not portend a trend. I confess some suspicions of my own, but they were dispelled by the outsized intelligence, fierce discipline and untethered curiosity the French troupe applied to the more-traditional first half, which comprised Mozart’s sunny Quartet in C (“Dissonant”), K. 465 , and Felix Mendelssohn’s dark Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80. It was clear from these performances that the Ebène was constitutionally incapable of anything cheap.
Still more Brahms, and more
The bulk of the Brahms Festival occupied the month of February, but some welcome overflow extended into March, with important Brahms chamber works included in concerts by the Olmos Ensemble (March 11) and the distinguished cello-piano duo of David Finckel and Wu Han (March 17). The San Antonio Chamber Music Society was the host for the latter concert, in Temple Beth-El. Ms. Wu and Mr. Finckel are co-artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and Mr. Finckel has appeared several times previously in San Antonio in his capacity as cellist with the Emerson String Quartet. (Ms. Wu told the audience that this was her first visit to San Antonio.)
Vox populi
OK, so I’m no Nate Silver, but I did accurately predict more than half the races in the Jan. 27 vote. Three out of five, to be precise. The Miró Quartet, returning to town for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society concert series at Temple Beth-El, opened its program with an exquisitely refined account of Johannes Brahms’s Quartet in C Minor and then let the audience pick the works for the second half, dubbed “Quartet à la carte.”
2012
Miró Quartet with Anton Nel
Eloquence doesn’t get much play in the age of the sound bite. We’re so wired for speed and informality that in most communication, a bluntness of expression holds sway. But in Bates Recital Hall last Friday, the Miró Quartet and pianist Anton Nel proved there are still places where thoughts are composed and conveyed with craft, where time is allowed for a range of feelings to be explored and for fine distinctions to be drawn.
Autumnal Beethoven, springy Brahms
The Chamber Orchestra Kremlin under its music director, Misha Rachlevsky, returned to town on Oct. 14 with the pianist James Dick, a beloved figure in San Antonio but too seldom seen here in recent years.
Their Temple Beth-El concert, this troupe’s fourth for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society, had Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto at its center. The Moscow-based string players held forth in works by Schubert, Tchaikovsky and Brahms.
Russian string ensemble performs at Brackenridge HS
SAN ANTONIO – Hundreds of high school students who have never heard a live classical chamber orchestra got a chance to experience one of the most famed ensembles to ever grace a stage when the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin played at Brackenridge High School Auditorium Monday morning.
The 17-piece string ensemble is on a Texas tour and only will stop at one other school in the state.
The San Antonio Chamber Music Society, which has been in existence for 70 years, made the arrangements for Misha Rachlevsky’s ensemble to make two stops in the city.
A walk in the moonlight, with a lighter step
The lush, perfumed chromaticism of Arnold Schönberg’s “Verklärte Nacht” is well known to concert audiences in its original 1902 scoring for string sextet and in the composer’s later arrangement for string orchestra. This expressionist, protomodern landmark appeared in a third guise as the centerpiece of a concert by the excellent Vienna Piano Trio, April 1 in First Unitarian-Universalist Church. The San Antonio Chamber Music Society sponsored the local tour stop.
An authentically freewheeling blast
A product of culture is never just an artifact, a thing. It is also a repository of the ideas, beliefs, practices, aspirations, limitations — the list goes on — of its historical context. Too, the way a cultural product is experienced is one of its essential qualities, and experience is unavoidably fluid, like the river you can’t step into twice.
Over the past few decades, musicians aligned with the “historically informed performance” movement have come reasonably close to reproducing the style and sonic character of music from the baroque period — the artifacts as they sounded at birth, to the extent that research has been able to illuminate.
2011
A compelling conversation, set in motion by Elliott Carter
Why do some musical works last while others fade? There are lots of reasons, of course, but one doesn’t get enough notice: Some pieces are just more fun to play than others, and most musicians prefer fun over tedium. And if the music is fun to play, there’s a good chance it also will be rewarding to hear.
The members of the Vancouver-based Lafayette String Quartet seemed to be having a ball with Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 2 (1958-59), the centerpiece of a San Antonio Chamber Music Society concert that opened with Samuel Barber’s Quartet in B and closed with P.I. Tchaikovsky’s Quartet No. 3 in E-flat. Temple Beth-El was the venue for the April 3 concert.
Yo-Yo Ma encourages students to express themselves
Sitting in Sul Ross Middle School’s library Friday morning and gently caressing his violin, Rico Rodriguez was excited yet, he admitted, “A little nervous.” But by the time Yo-Yo Ma, the world-famous cellist, began stomping around the library like a monster and pretending that he was from Mars, Rodriguez and the rest of his school’s orchestra were at ease.
Overnight: Yo-Yo Ma
The audience attending the Silk Road Ensemble concert Thursday night might never again see musicians having so much fun together on stage. Famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma led the party, and the sellout crowd eagerly joined in by clapping along during the magical tour of culturally blended musical expression.
From Fauré, a quartet worthy of limelight
The Ysaÿe Quartet of France brought some of the plushest string-quartet playing we’ve heard in years to a program of first-class works by Mozart, Fauré and Brahms, March 6 in Temple Beth-El for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society.
Oh what a GREAT concert!
What a concert! Bravo to the San Antonio Chamber Music Society for bringing in the Quatuor Ysäye for a concert of Mozart, Fauré and Brahms on Sunday. While I wasn’t totally thrilled with the programming, the performance was a good as I’ve ever experienced. I just loved it!
Cypress String Quartet with Amit Peled: Three great near-death experiences
Israeli cellist Amit Peled and the Cypress String Quartet collaborated in a program of late-in-life masterworks by three master composers, Jan. 30 for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society in Temple Beth-El.
Beethoven was represented by his compact final statement for string quartet, the one in F, Op. 135. Franz Schubert’s magnificent Cello Quintet in C was the closer. Mr. Peled opened the concert on his own with a revelation, Benjamin Britten’s Suite No. 3 for solo cello.
2010
Imani Winds: A whole world of music
Not that there isn’t plenty of life in the old stories, but it’s good to hear some new ones now and then, from different climes, with different points of view, told with verve and skill.
Enter the Imani Winds. First heard locally a few years ago in a memorable Carver Center concert joined by Paquito D’Rivera, the New York-based woodwind quintet made a very welcome return visit to town on Nov. 14, this time on the San Antonio Chamber Music Society series at Temple Beth-El.
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center: Music for five, played winningly by six
The San Antonio Chamber Music Society opened its 68th season, Oct. 10 in Temple Beth-El, with a visit by members of that other Chamber Music Society, the one attached to Lincoln Center in New York.
The program held late-in-life quintets by W.A. Mozart and Johannes Brahms and a youthful but altogether masterful quintet by Felix Mendelssohn.
2009
Concert: Albers Trio
The San Antonio Chamber Music Society wraps up its current season with the Albers Trio. The trio consists of three sisters — cellist Julie Albers, violist Rebecca Albers and violinist Laura Albers — who each began studying at age 2 with their mother, Ellie LeRoux. They will be performing Mozart’s Divertimento in E-flat, Phillip Magnuson’s “Little Suite for String Trio” and Heitor Villa-Lobos’ String Trio.
*Full article is no longer available
Concerts: San Antonio Chamber Music Society
The basics: The San Antonio Chamber Music Society strives to bring in musicians who are less well-known in the United States than Europe and elsewhere. Sunday, they’ll do just that with Israel’s Aviv String Quartet. Eileen Lundin, publicity chairwoman for the society, says that Aviv comes from a sound tradition of Russian Jewish music, so the sound should be lively and have a lot of soul. The ensemble will play pieces by Haydn, Beethoven and Shostakovich.
*Full article is no longer available
Dear Editor
Many thanks to the San Antonio Chamber Music Society for bringing the world acclaimed consort of violas “Fretwork” to San Antonio.
The concert last Sunday was a rare triple treat for classical music lovers. The all-baroque concert was rare because all-baroque concerts occur only once or twice a year in our city. Thus the all Purcell concert was even more rare because it is virtually impossible to hear any of Purcell’s music performed in San Antonio. And it was rare because a concert of consort of viola never occurs here.
It was a treat because the performance presented the concert at the highest level of professionalism and artistry. I hope that the Society will continue to bring such early music ensembles to our community.
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Fretwork's viol concert to open chamber season
The San Antonio Chamber Music Society opens 2009 with a performance by Fretwork, a viol consort. And, no, you don’t need to know what exactly a viol consort — or even a viol — is to enjoy the music. But we’ll fill you in anyway.
*Full article is no longer available
2008
Whimsy, sadness figure in quartet's musical lineup
Viola player Josef Kluson likens the longevity of the award-winning Prazak Quartet — which began in 1972 when its members were students at the Prague Conservatory — both to determination and the sheer realities of the passage of time.
*Full article is no longer available
Emerson Quartet concert, not surprisingly, world-class
When a group is as famous as The Emerson String Quartet, no one expects anything but a stellar performance.
That’s just what they delivered at their Sunday afternoon concert in San Antonio. The quartet – violinists Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker, violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist David Finckel – offered up more than two hours of top-notch chamber music as the opening act of the San Antonio Chamber Music Society’s 66th season.
*Full article is no longer available
Busy quartet to perform in S.A.
In the world of classical music, it’s hard to be bigger than the Emerson String Quartet. It’s scored eight Grammys, maintained a 29-year residency at the Smithsonian Institution, released definitive recordings of quartet works by too many composers to list here and played to packed halls around the globe.
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The string quartet and beyond
When the San Antonio Chamber Music Society first began bringing leading artists to the Alamo City for intimate concerts, the programming was pretty simple.
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2007
Conversation with Amit Peled
Israeli cellist Amit Peled is forging an international career of the highest caliber both as a soloist and as an enthusiastic teacher. The American Record Guide hails him as “having the flair of the young Rostropovich” and he is one of the youngest cello professors ever to be appointed to a major conservatory in the United States (Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University).
Chamber Music Society starts season with Enso quartet
San Antonio Symphony principal violist Allyson Dawkins was impressed when she heard the Enso String Quartet at Chamber Music America’s annual conference in January in New York. “They blew everyone else out of the water,” said Dawkins, also a member of the artist-selection committee for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society.
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Concert Review: Ensemble smoothly delivers
There is something to be said for sheer beauty of the sort the Borodin Quartet produced on Sunday for the San Antonio Chamber Music Society.
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Concert Review: Norway quartet delivers beauty
The excellent Vertavo String Quartet of Norway brought some old and new music from home, along with Franz Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden,” to the San Antonio Chamber Music Society on Sunday in Temple Beth-El.
*Full article is no longer available
2006
Quartet: a thing of beauty
“There’s going to be beautiful music.” That’s what Jan Van den Hende, president of the San Antonio Chamber Music Society, predicts for Sunday’s intimate concert with the venerable Vermeer String Quartet.
*Full article is no longer available
2004
Top Ticket: Mendelssohn String Quartet w/Jonathan Biss
If your head is big enough to hold your ears several miles apart, you can hear two promising concerts in stereo this afternoon. The San Antonio Chamber Music Society continues its season with the highly regarded Mendelssohn String Quartet and pianist Jonathan Biss – a pairing that also appeared recently at the prestigious Gilmore International Keyboard Competition in Michigan.
*Full article is no longer available