Carleton College invites the public to a free performance by the Grammy Award-winning Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra (SPCO) on Wednesday, May 2 at 8 p.m. in the Kracum Performance Hall of the Weitz Center for Creativity. This not-to-be-missed concert will be led by acclaimed Moldovan violinist, Patricia Kopatchinskaja. In 2014 the British Royal Philharmonic Society named Kopatchinskaja “instrumentalist of the year” and described her as an “irresistible force of nature: passionate, challenging and totally original in her approach.” A recent Star Tribune (Minneapolis) review called her work with the SPCO “devilishly, rivetingly exciting.”
The program, “Fragments,” will center on the exploration of the mystery behind various incomplete musical fragments. The last part of Bach’s magnum opus, his Art of Fugue, trails off mysteriously mid-sentence just as Bach embarks on a complex fugue that contains his musical signature. Fragments of a German chorale (“Immortal Victims”) haunt Hartmann’s tragic Concerto funebre, and Kopatchinskaja intersperses selections from Kurtág’s Kafka Fragments between the movements of Mozart’s most dramatic symphony. Schubert wrote just forty bars of an Andante that was meant to follow his brilliant Quartettsatz, a tantalizingly beautiful fragment that will end the concert.
Based in Bern, Switzerland, Kopatchinskaja was born in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Moldova) to a family of musicians. She began playing the violin at the age of 6 and later studied in Vienna and Switzerland. She has played with the most important European orchestras including the Vienna, Berlin and London Philharmonic. She regularly tours in Japan, Australia, Russia, China, South America, and the United States. Since 2014 she has served as an artistic partner with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.
Now in its 59th season, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is widely regarded as one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world. In collaboration with a team of artistic partners, its virtuoso musicians present more than 130 concerts and educational programs each year, and are regularly heard on public radio’s Performance Today, which reach 1.3 million listeners each week on 289 stations, and Symphony Cast, which reaches 250,000 listeners each week on 143 stations nationwide. Learn more on their website.
This event is sponsored by the Carleton College Department of Music. For more information, including disability accommodations, call (507) 222-4475. The Kracum Performance Hall is located in the Weitz Center for Creativity at 320 Third Street in Northfield.
