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.