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Violinist Marka Young, director of string ensembles at Lafayette, and pianist Ishmael Wallace will perform a program of works by Maurice Ravel, Johannes Brahms, Tommasso Vitali, Charles Ives, and Alfred Schnittke 8 p.m. tomorrow, at the Williams Center for the Arts.
The concert is free and open to the public.
Young performs as a recitalist and chamber musician throughout the northeastern United States. She has appeared as concerto soloist and chamber musician at the Banff Festival, Blossom Festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival, Maverick Concerts, and at Music Mountain. She Young performs with the ensembles Artek, Rebel, New York Collegium, and Hudson Valley Philharmonic. She has played on recordings for Albany Records, Newport Classics, and the Trinity Church label. As a member of Rebel, she has appeared on NPR’s “Performance Today” and WQXR’s broadcast of the Trinity Church Messiah this past December. She has appeared twice in recital on Maine Public Radio.
Wallace is a member of Orfeo Duo, whose other member is his sister, violinist Vita Wallace. He has given recitals across the Americas and in Italy, and recorded for Marquis Classics, VAI, Vienna Modern Masters, and Tzadik. Wallace is the composer of four operas, all of which have been performed, as well as chamber and orchestral works.
The program includes a mixture of well-loved and lesser-known works. Among the former are Johannes Brahms’ Sonata #3 in d minor and the Vitali Chaconne. The less frequently performed works on the program are by Ravel, Ives, and Schnittke.
Ravel’s “Posthumous” Sonata was discovered among his papers in the 1970s. The manuscript is dated April 1897, when the composer was attending Paris Conservatory. There is no record of the Sonata being performed in his lifetime.
The Sonata #2 “Quasi una sonata” is Schnittke’s first polystylistic work and an important moment in the Russian/German composer’s career. Schnittke taught for years at Moscow Conservatory after attending the institution himself. He left this post in order to pursue a career in composing film scores.
Ives is and was known as an eccentric composer, a man and artist ahead of his time. He was interested in the sounds of nature, of using well-known songs of the times as part of a collage and of the clash of two musical activities going on at once. His Sonata #4, “Children’s Day at the Camp Meeting,” is filled with song quotes and overlapping and clashing melodies.