Chamber Society broadens its scope

March 13, 2005

BY MARK STRYKER
FREE PRESS MUSIC WRITER

A leading early music ensemble, a brilliant French pianist known for his command of contemporary repertoire and a Bach marathon performed by an A-list cellist who's been spending a lot of time in rock clubs will highlight the Chamber Music Society of Detroit's 2005-06 season.

The lineup, the most diverse in recent society history, is especially notable for the appearance of alt-classical cellist Matt Haimovitz. A dynamic and ponytailed former prodigy, Haimovitz has been winning converts to classical music one listener at a time by barnstorming around the country playing new American music and Bach in clubs and bars (including the Blind Pig in Ann Arbor in 2004).

Haimovitz will scale one of the summits in Western music for the society, performing all six of Bach's unaccompanied cello suites in a single sitting in February. One night earlier, Haimovitz will join the St. Lawrence String Quartet.

In a nomenclature shift, the society's two series have been renamed for next season. The nine-concert main series will be called the Opus 9 Series and the three-concert grouping the Opus 3 Series. Subscription sales have been so robust in recent years that many society concerts sell out the 720-seat Seligman Performing Arts Center. Society leaders introduced the smaller series this season to accommodate the increased demand.

This season, those three concerts have been devoted to piano recitals, but the menu for 2005-06 has been broadened to include all manner of chamber music, offering newcomers a more complete snapshot of the society's programming.

Other highlights:

  • The English Concert of London, one of the world's leading baroque ensembles and now under the artistic direction of violinist Andrew Manze, will be the first early music ensemble to perform in the society's series in more than a decade.
  • Pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard, best known as a brilliant interpreter of Charles Ives, Olivier Messiaen and Gyorgy Ligeti, makes his society debut. The program has not been announced.
  • A splashy season-opening concert pairs the Shanghai and Guarneri String Quartets for a performance of Mendelssohn's Octet. Later in the season, the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio teams with the Claremont Trio and hornist Gail Williams to play Schumann's rarely heard "Andante and Variations, Op. 46," for two pianos, two cellos and horn.

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