“Voyages”
The Forty-Ninth Season 2024-2025
“Voyage of Love”
The Friends of Chamber Music Kansas City proudly opens its Forty-Ninth Season with “Voyage of Love” — a celebration of the most sublime human feeling with three works exploring the facets of this most human of expressions. The intimate side is revealed in Clara Schumann’s Violin Romances, the transformative side uncovered in Arnold Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, and its majestic affirmation displayed in Johannes Brahms’s String Sextet No.2. Join us this Friday the 13th, as we celebrate (to the day) Arnold’s 150th and Clara’s 205th birthdays in the company of spectacular virtuosos Jennifer Frautschi, Oliver Neubauer, Che-Yen Chen, Hsin-Yun Huang, Nicholas Canellakis, and FCMKC Artistic Directors Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park.
“Poulenc’s Homage to Winds” — The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
The Friends partners with the nation’s premier chamber music organization — the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center — to bring to light a spectacular program centered around music for wind instruments in multiple combinations. Marking the return of the phenomenal master pianist Anne-Marie McDermott, we have a chance to introduce to Kansas City the former principal horn of the Berlin Philharmonic, Radek Baborák, alongside a star-studded international cast of performers: flutist Adam Walker, oboist James Austin Smith, clarinetist David Shifrin, and bassoonist Marc Goldberg. Poulenc’s enchanting Sextet for Piano and Winds anchors the evening.
Isidore String Quartet
Winners of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022, the Isidore String Quartet was formed with a vision to revisit, rediscover, and reinvigorate the repertory. The quartet is heavily influenced by the Juilliard String Quartet and the idea of ‘approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.’ They will make their Kansas City debut in a fascinating tour-de-force program featuring works by Erwin Schulhoff, Henri Dutilleux, Billy Childs, and W. A. Mozart.
Leonkoro String Quartet
The winners of the Wigmore Hall Quartet Competition, Leonkoro String Quartet, in their Kansas City debut, offer a multifaceted program with music by Haydn, Berg, Shaw, and Mendelssohn. The group “possesses an extraordinary stage presence, glows for the music, embraces full artistic risk, and astounds through their profound sensitivity towards the unique sonority of each piece “ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“Voyage de passion”
A phenomenal concert celebrating the riveting abandon of francophone passion. Featuring works by Maurice Ravel, Joseph Jongen, and Gabriel Faure, the FCMKC Artistic Directors Dmitri Atapine and Hyeyeon Park will be joined on stage by violinist Martin Beaver (formerly the first violin of the famed Tokyo Quartet) and acclaimed violist Ettore Causa of Yale University.