A symphony for summer

If you haven’t given classical music a try, you have a rare opportunity to see Portland State’s orchestra students perform with a world renowned violinist.


PSU’s orchestral program will kick off a summer-long festival of chamber music performances, to be hosted by Portland-based Chamber Music Northwest. PSU Symphony Orchestra’s concert titled “Brahms and Beyond” will be held this Friday at Lincoln Performance Hall and will feature a guest performance by internationally acclaimed violinist and festival musician Jennifer Frautschi.

The concert will serve as an introduction to the Chamber Music Northwest festival, which opens late June and runs through July, with concerts taking place at colleges and venues throughout the city. The concerts feature an array of visiting musicians of international renown.

The Brahms concert was put together in 2010, when the festival’s artistic director, David Shifrin, discussed collaboration with PSU’s director of orchestral studies, Ken Selden.

“We immediately saw the opportunity to begin building a relationship with PSU and also introduce a pre-festival event as a way to get our audience excited about the upcoming festival,” festival Operations Director Elizabeth Harcombe. “At the same time, we knew that the renovation of Lincoln Hall would be complete, and this was a possible performance space for a weekly series during our summer festival.”

The Brahms concert will showcase works by early 20th century composers Alban Berg and Heinz Karl Gruber as well as 19th century composer Johannes Brahms. Frautschi will join the orchestra for the performance of the “Alban Berg Violin Concerto.” Subtitled “To the Memory of an Angel,” the piece is dedicated to one of Berg’s friend’s daughters, who died of polio at an early age.

“She had just passed away when Berg wrote the piece. In that sense, it’s a very emotional, wrenching, heartfelt piece,” Frautschi said. “It’s highly layered and quite intricate. The sound of it is quite modern, but at the same time, it has a very romantic center to it.”

Frautschi will also perform at Lincoln Hall tonight along with festival pianist Anna Polonsky and horn player Eric Rusky. Hosted by Chamber Music Northwest along with the university Orchestra concert, the chamber recital will feature works by Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. Though Frautschi will not perform Brahms’ work with the orchestra, she pointed out that he served as a bridging figure between the two events.

“The thing about Brahms is that, in terms of time-line, he’s sort of in the middle,” she said. “He’s someone who, while he was certainly very forward looking, he was also deeply conservative in a sense. He was very aware of the conservative traditions and forms of the past. He was sort of a pivot point, musically speaking.”

Chamber Music Northwest has provided summer festivals for the city since 1971. In addition to the concerts, the festival also offers fellowships and educational opportunities to aspiring musicians.

“Chamber Music Northwest has become one of the most successful summer music festivals in the nation and now presents concerts on a year-round basis,” Harcombe said. “The artists invited to perform in our concerts are among the most sought-after soloists, chamber musicians and recordings artists here and abroad.”