Romantic String Sextets

Romantic String Sextets

Strauss: Capriccio, Op. 85
Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4
Tchaikovsky: Souvenir de Florence in d minor, Op. 70

with Rebecca Albers, viola

Arnold Schoenberg's lush and moving early masterpiece "Transfigured
Night," inspired by a dark Romantic poem by Richard Dehmel, and written shortly
before his immersion into serial or twelve-tone music, is centered between two
other seminal works for string sextet. 
Richard Strauss' gorgeous curtain opener for his final opera Capriccio
opens Accordo's new series at the architecturally stunning Christ Church
Lutheran, and Tchiakovsky's brilliant "Souvenir de Florence" closes the program
with all the unbridled passion and Russian folk melodies one expects from the
composer of the Nutcracker.

Rebecca Albers is among the Minnesota Orchestra's newest members, having
joined the ensemble in 2010 as assistant principal viola. She also continues to
tour with the Albers Trio, a string ensemble she and two sisters formed. She
previously toured with fiddler Mark O'Connor's Appalachia Waltz Trio and was a
member of the East Coast Chamber Orchestra and Phoenix Quartet.

Albers, a faculty member at the North American Viola Institute in
Orford, Quebec, has also joined the faculty of the Perlman Music Program in New
York, and serves on the executive board of the American Viola Society. She was
formerly on the faculty of the University of Michigan. She has participated in
festivals including the Marlboro Music Festival, Perlman Music Program and, at
Prussia Cove in the United Kingdom, the International Musicians Seminar and
Open Chamber Music.

Accordo, established in 2009, is a Minnesota-based chamber
group made up of some of the very best instrumentalists in the country,
eager to share their love of classical and contemporary chamber music in
intimate and unique performance spaces. Its 2011/12 season will be
presented by Kate Nordstrum Projects, Northrop Concerts & Lectures
and The Schubert Club at the National Historic Landmark Christ Church
Lutheran, one of the Twin Cities' great architectural treasures designed
by the esteemed architect Eliel Saarinen and his son Eero Saarinen.

Accordo includes SPCO principal players Steve Copes, Ruggero
Allifranchini, Maiya Papach, and Ron Thomas and Minnesota Orchestra
principal cellist Tony Ross. This season also includes guest artists
Rebecca Albers, Ian Ding, Burt Hara, and Erin Keefe.