AMONG the featured artists this week during the Bowdoin International Music Festival are, pianist Emma Tahmizian, above, and below, from left, Eric Zuber, Ray Cornils and Peter Basquin
T he Bowdoin International Music Festival offers another week of masterful performances of classical music.
Tonight’s Festival Friday performance will showcase Maine artist Ray Cornils on harpsichord in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5.
Unlike the other five Brandenburg Concerti, Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 includes a solo harpsichord movement. Cornils is the municipal organist for Portland, and a faculty member of Bowdoin College, the University of Southern Maine, and the Portland Conservatory of Music. He has performed throughout the United States, Europe and South America, and plays regularly with the Portland Symphony Orchestra, both as harpsichordist and organist.
Tahmizian has performed at the Bowdoin Festival every year since her arrival in 1988, fresh from a successful appearance in the Van Cliburn competition.
This is Zuber’s first season at the Bowdoin Festival as a featured artist. He attended the festival as a student, and is here this year as a member of the Bowdoin Virtuosi, a program that brings the most accomplished young artists from around the world to perform with festival faculty and to participate in individually designed study programs.
Festival Fridays concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Brunswick High School’s Crooker Theater. Tickets are $40.
Monday Sonatas
The July 16 Monday Sonatas concert presents pianists Tahmizian and Peter Basquin in works by Bach and Debussy.
Basquin will open the concert with Debussy’s Preludes and then return to perform Debussy’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Minor with Festival director Lewis Kaplan.
After intermission, Tahmizian will perform the Goldberg Variations, one of Bach’s most famous and widely admired works, called by the famed Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, “one of the monuments of keyboard literature.”
Monday Sonatas concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Studzinski Recital Hall on the Bowdoin College campus. Tickets are $30.
Wednesday Upbeat!
Ray Cornils will return to the Bowdoin Festival stage in the July 18 Wednesday Upbeat! concert in Bach’s Trio Sonata in C Minor from the Musical Offering. The work also features flutist Randy Bowman, who will be joined by cellist David Requiro and violinist Janet Sung.
Bowman, the principal flutist of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was formerly the principal flutist of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, the Boston Ballet Orchestra, and the Handel & Haydn Society.
Requiro won first prize in the 2008 Naumburg International Violoncello Competition, among others. He is artist in residence at the University of Puget Sound and is a member of the Jupiter Symphony Chamber Players.
Since her orchestral debut with the Pittsburgh Symphony at age 9, Sung has performed as a soloist with leading orchestras and in recitals worldwide.
Harpist June Han teams up with Bowman to perform Debussy’s Sonata for Flute, Viola, and Harp with violist Dimitri Murrath. A newcomer to Bowdoin this season, Murrath has won numerous awards, including first prize at the 2008 Primrose International Viola Competition and second prize at the First Tokyo International Viola Competition 2009.
A faculty ensemble led by Frank Huang, concertmaster of the Houston Symphony, and pianist Constance Moore will close the concert with Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A Minor. Wednesday Upbeat! concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Studzinski Recital Hall on the Bowdoin College campus. Tickets are $30.
Artists of Tomorrow
The Artists of Tomorrow concert series, featuring the festival’s top students, offers concerts on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in Studzinski Recital Hall.
Suggested donation is $10. Student concert programs are announced the day of the concert. To receive email announcements of student concert programs, visit www.bowdoinfestival.org.
Bowdoin Festival Extra
The Bowdoin Festival’s educational series, Bowdoin Festival Extra, continues with two concerts and three instrumental demonstrations. The concerts include the annual family concert at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, and a concert at 2 p.m. Tuesday at Phippsburg Congregational Church.
This year’s family concert will showcase the festival’s woodwind program.
Instrumental demonstrations in Gibson Hall on the Bowdoin College campus include: Monday, Dmitri Murrath, viola; Tuesday, Randy Bowman; and Thursday, Ricardo Iznaola, guitar.
The Bowman class will be at 3 p.m.; the other two are at 4 p.m. All Bowdoin Festival Extra events are free and open to the public.
July 20
The festival’s July 20 concert will showcase former festival student Kier GoGwilt in Beethoven’s Violin Concerto.
GoGwilt appears in preparation for an appearance in St. Petersburg, Russia, under the baton of Valery Gergiev.
Lewis Kaplan will conduct the Bowdoin Festival Orchestra. The program also includes Dvorak’s Terzetto in C Major, Op. 74, led by Renee Jolles, concertmaster of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, led by flutist Randy Bowman.
Festival Fridays concerts are held at 7:30 p.m. in Brunswick High School’s Crooker Theater. Tickets are $40.
For a complete listing of all festival events and ticket information, visit bowdoinfestival.org. For more information, call 725-3895.
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