Opening Night with East Coast Chamber Orchestra
After a year without live concerts, Chamber Music Northwest’s Summer Festival roars back into the concert hall with a jubilant celebration of music! The captivating energy of the conductorless East Coast Chamber Orchestra (ECCO) has made them audience favorites wherever they play. Joined by new CMNW Artistic Directors Gloria Chien and
Soovin Kim, ECCO kicks off the festival with an evening of exhilarating chamber orchestra masterpieces by Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky.
Reed College, Kaul Auditorium
Thursday, 7/1 • 7:30 pm PT
Friday, 7/2 • 7:30 pm PT
Program
Click on any piece of music below to learn more about it.
- BACH Cantata 180: “Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele”, BWV 180
- MENDELSSOHN Concerto for Piano, Violin, and Strings in D minor, MWV O4
- TCHAIKOVSKY Serenade for String Orchestra in C Major, Op. 48
TCHAIKOVSKY Serenade for String Orchestra in C Major, Op. 48
(1840-1893)
I. Pezzo in forma di sonatina
II. Valse
III. Élégie
IV. Finale: Tema russoPeter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who once dubbed Mozart “the Christ of music,” wrote the Serenade for Strings in C Major as a tribute to his favorite composer. “It is intended to be an imitation of his style,” Tchaikovsky wrote, “and I should be delighted if I thought I had in any way approached my model. Tchaikovsky composed his Serenade in 1880, at the same time as the 1812 Overture, but his feelings about the two works could not have differed more strongly. “You can imagine, beloved friend, that my muse has been benevolent of late when I tell you that I have written two long works very rapidly,” Tchaikovsky wrote to his patron Nadezhda von Meck, “the festival Overture [the 1812] and a Serenade in four movements for string orchestra. The Overture will be very noisy; I wrote it without much warmth or enthusiasm and therefore it has no great artistic value. The Serenade, on the contrary, I wrote from inner conviction. It is a heartfelt piece and so, I dare to think, is not without artistic ‘qualities’. Tchaikovsky was so pleased with his Serenade that upon its completion he wrote to his publisher, “I am violently in love with this work and cannot wait for it to be played.” At its premiere on October 30, 1881, in St. Petersburg, the audience responded in a similar fashion, calling for an encore of the second movement. The Pezzo in forma di Sonatina (Piece in the form of a Sonatina) begins with a slow introduction, in the manner of an 18th century string serenade. This rich, hymn-like melody gives way to an energetic tune that suggests the buoyant joy of Mozart’s music. The lilting Walzer (Waltz) has delighted audiences since its first performance; here Tchaikovsky captured its essential Viennese flavor,
and the music sparkles throughout. In the Élégie we hear hints of the brooding murmurous quality most suggestive of Tchaikovsky’s style, but the overall mood of this movement is meditative rather than melancholy. In the final movement, Tchaikovsky uses contrasting Russian folksongs, one for the slow introduction and the other full of hustle and bustle. The first movement hymn concludes the Serenade.—© Elizabeth Schwartz
2021 Summer Festival Program Book
Artists
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Gloria Chien
Piano & Artistic Director
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Taiwanese-born pianist Gloria Chien has one of the most diverse musical lives as a noted performer, concert presenter, and educator. She made her orchestral debut at the age of sixteen with the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Thomas Dausgaard, and she performed again with the BSO with Keith Lockhart. She was subsequently selected by The Boston Globe as one of its Superior Pianists of the year, “who appears to excel in everything.” In recent seasons, she has performed as a recitalist and chamber musician at Alice Tully Hall, the Library of Congress, the Dresden Chamber Music Festival, and the National Concert Hall in Taiwan. She performs frequently with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. In 2009, she launched String Theory, a chamber music series in Chattanooga, Tennessee that has become one of the region’s premier classical music presenters. The following year she was appointed director of the Chamber Music Institute at Music@Menlo, a position she held for the next decade.
In 2017, she joined her husband, violinist Soovin Kim, as artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival in Burlington, Vermont. The duo became artistic directors at Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon in 2020. They were named recipients of Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Award for Extraordinary Service in 2021 for their efforts during the pandemic.
Most recently, Gloria was named Advisor of the newly launched Institute for Concert Artists at the New England Conservatory of Music. Gloria released two albums—her Gloria Chien LIVE from the Music@Menlo LIVE label and Here With You with acclaimed clarinetist Anthony McGill on Cedille Records.
Gloria received her bachelor, master’s, and doctoral degrees at the New England Conservatory of Music with Wha Kyung Byun and Russell Sherman. She is Artist-in-Residence at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and she is a Steinway Artist.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Soovin Kim
2025 YAI Faculty, Violin & Artistic Director
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Soovin Kim enjoys a broad musical career regularly performing Bach sonatas and Paganini caprices for solo violin, sonatas for violin and piano ranging from Beethoven to Ives, Mozart, and Haydn concertos and symphonies as a conductor, and new world-premiere works almost every season. When he was 20 years old, Kim received first prize at the Paganini International Violin Competition. He immersed himself in the string quartet literature for 20 years as the 1st violinist of the Johannes Quartet. Among his many commercial recordings are his “thrillingly triumphant” (Classic FM Magazine) disc of Paganini’s demanding 24 Caprices and a two-disc set of Bach’s complete solo violin works that were released in 2022.
Kim is the founder and artistic director of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival (LCCMF) in Burlington, Vermont. In addition to its explorative programming and extensive work with living composers, LCCMF created the ONE Strings program through which all 3rd through 5th grade students of the Integrated Arts Academy in Burlington study violin. The University of Vermont recognized Soovin Kim’s work by bestowing an Honorary Doctorate upon him in 2015. In 2020, he and his wife, pianist Gloria Chien, became artistic directors of Chamber Music Northwest in Portland, Oregon. He, with Chien, were awarded Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s 2021 CMS Award for Extraordinary Service to Chamber Music. Kim devotes much of his time to his passion for teaching at the New England Conservatory in Boston and the Yale School of Music in New Haven.
Upcoming Concerts & Events