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Ronald Feldman, cello

Fri, September 23rd, 2011
8:00 pm

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The Williams College Department of Music presents cellist Ronald Feldman on Friday, Sept. 23 at 8 p.m. in Brooks-Rogers Recital Hall. This free event is free and open to the public.

Pianist and Williams Artist Associate Elizabeth Wright joins Mr. Feldman on a musical journey that takes the audience on a tour of cello music that includes the sounds and nuances of Catalonia and Spain, the Basque regions, and Brazil.

Gaspar Casadó was a great cellist who lived from 1897 to 1966. A student of another great Catalonian cellist, Pablo Casals, Casadó was also a noted composer and studied with Ravel. Requiebros is one of the best known of his works and Mr. Feldman’s interpretation of this work offers a rare chance to hear it live.

Though we rightly think of Maurice as a French composer, he was born in a Basque village and felt a bond with the region and with Spain. Much of his music seems to draw from this source, and his work Piéce en Forme de Habanera is no exception.

As a special treat for cellists, or for any music-lover, Mr. Feldman fields a team of eight all-Williams cellists for a performance of Bachianas Brasileiras # 5 by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos. Joining this group as soprano soloist is Kerry Ryer-Parke.

Also featured on the program are works by Enrique Granados, Cesar Casella and Manuel de Falla.

In the second half of the program Mr. Feldman and pianist Elizabeth Wright spice up the Iberian-influenced love affair with the cello with dash of Russian romanticism: Sonata for Cello and Piano by Serge Rachmaninoff.

Ronald Feldman is artist in residence in orchestral/instrumental music, and coordinator of student string chamber music here at Williams College. After a long career in the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s cello section starting in 1967 at the age of nineteen, Mr. Feldman has gone on to receive critical acclaim for a wide variety of musical achievements. Formerly music director and conductor of the Worcester Symphony Orchestra and of the Boston new music ensemble Extension Works, Ronald Feldman was also music director and conductor of the New England Philharmonic for five seasons. In 1991 he and the Berkshire Symphony were awarded the American Symphony Orchestra League’s ASCAP Award for Adventuresome Programming of Contemporary Music.  He continues to be an active cellist, conductor, and a member of the Williams Chamber Players.

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