Missouri Chamber Music Festival spotlights modern composers – St. Louis Post-Dispatch

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Benedetta Orsi, Davin Rubicz and Nina Ferrigno will all perform at the 14th annual Missouri Chamber Music Festival
The 14th annual Missouri Chamber Music Festival, which gets underway with an opening reception at the Kemper Art Museum Thursday night, is themed “Game Changers and the Music of Our Surroundings.” Over the course of four concerts, held June 10-21 at three different venues, it will examine pieces of classical chamber music both old and new that, according to festival executive director Nina Ferrigno, “had a big impact emotionally and are still relevant to the present day.
“What I was thinking about were those pieces in our classical music canon that kind of changed things forever,” adds Ferrigno, who is also a founding member of the Calyx Piano Trio, which will perform at two of the concerts.
Tying music to objects and ambient sounds is a specialty of French composer Florent Ghys, who recently completed a year of teaching at Washington University and whose piece “Huit-Clos,” a “composition for piano trio and apartment,” was commissioned by the festival and will be performed by the Calyx Trio — the piano part, at least.
“Florent has a way of looking at things that are surrounding us, this sort of noise, whether it’s noise from trains or telephones or whatever, and he creates music from it in a very rigorous and innovative way,” Ferrigno says.
Nina Ferrigno is a pianist and founding member of the Calyx Piano Trio, as well as executive director of Missouri Chamber Music Festival.
The festival’s first two concerts, titled “Entra’Acte” and “Dream Machine” will be held June 10 and June 13, respectively, at the First Congregational Church of Webster Groves. The first concert takes its title from a piece by Caroline Shaw, one of the contemporary composers represented at the festival, the others being Ghys, Missy Mazzoli, Gabriela Lena Frank and Jessie Montgomery.
The first concert also includes several pieces by Johannes Brahms, including “Von ewiger Liebe” and Sonata No. 2 in A major for piano and violin, plus Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in F major.
The second concert, “Dream Machine,” features Frank’s “Ghosts in the Dream Machine” along with Montgomery’s Rhapsody No. 1 for solo violin and Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E-flat major.
For its third concert, the festival moves to the 560 Music Center’s E Desmond Lee Concert Hall on June 19. “Morning Music,” which is indeed performed in the a.m., spotlights Arnold Schoenberg’s “Sechs kleine Klavierstücke,” Igor Stravinsky’s “The Owl and the Pussy-Cat,” Mazzoli’s “A Thousand Tongues” and Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Trio in G major.
The final concert, “Pierrot,” returns to the Kemper on June 21 and will feature Shaw’s “Thousandth Orange,” the world premiere of Ghys’ “Huit-Clos” and Schoenberg’s “Pierrot lunaire.”
Benedetta Orsi
“Some of what we fight against in classical music is that it’s somehow a dead art form or that it’s elitist and doesn’t relate to people today,” Ferrigno says. “I don’t believe that for a second. What I like to do (with the programming) is to show a continuum, and when possible, to do that within one concert, so that you see that Schumann really influenced Gabriela Lena Frank.”
Ferrigno says that she’s also careful to balance the programs “so that we’re not just doing the music of deceased white European males.” Thus, alongside Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Schumann and Brahms, there is Ghys, Shaw, Mazzoli, Montgomery and Frank.
Balance, too, plays a role in selecting the musicians performing at the festival. Ferrigno’s Calyx Piano Trio is based in Boston and some of the other participants, such as mezzo-soprano Janna Baty and conductor James Sommerville, hail from elsewhere. But there are plenty of St. Louis musicians participating, including mezzo-soprano Benedetta Orsi, cellist Davin Rubicz, SLSO cellist Bjorn Ranheim, SLSO violinists Hannah Ji, Kyle Lombard and Andrea Jarrett, among others.
“It’s been really exciting to see the concerts come to life with these amazing players,” Ferrigno says.
Though some of the more recent classical music can seem forbidding, Ferrigno stresses that it’s not necessary to understand it on a “nerd level.” Instead, she says, this may be a better approach: “Imagine that it’s just an experience to have — that it’s almost like looking at a painting and just observing an intensity and color that you’re not supposed to understand. You’re just experiencing that color.”
Next year will be the festival’s 15th year and Ferrigno is looking forward to celebrating such a significant anniversary. “We’ve got some special things planned already,” she says. “We’re really trying to take things to a new level.”
A previous version of this article stated the incorrect ticket price for the concerts. It has been updated.
Missouri Chamber Music Festival: Game Changers and the Music of Our Surroundings
Opening reception: The Art, the Music, 6 p.m. June 6, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 1 Brookings Drive, free
Concert 1: “Entra’acte,” 7 p.m. June 10, First Congregational Church of Webster Groves, 10 West Lockwood Avenue, $25, students $5
Concert II: “Dream Machine,” 7 p.m. June 13, First Congregational Church of Webster Groves, $25, students $5
Concert III: “MOCM Morning Music,” 10:30 a.m. June 19, 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Avenue, University City, $25, students $5
Concert IV: “Pierrot,” Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, 7 p.m. June 21, free
More info: mochambermusic.org
View life in St. Louis through the Post-Dispatch photographers’ lenses. Edited by Jenna Jones.
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Benedetta Orsi, Davin Rubicz and Nina Ferrigno will all perform at the 14th annual Missouri Chamber Music Festival
Nina Ferrigno is a pianist and founding member of the Calyx Piano Trio, as well as executive director of Missouri Chamber Music Festival.
Benedetta Orsi
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