WARREN MILLER PERFORMING ARTS CENTER
BIG
SKY – Montana native and celebrated violinist Gabrielle Wunsch will present an
intimate chamber music program at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center on
Wednesday, Sept. 4, at 7:30 p.m. Performing will be Wunsch on violin, Bobby
Mitchell on piano and Bruce Chrisp on trombone.
This
intimate recital program celebrates the deep friendship and professional
relationships shared by German composer Robert Schumann and his celebrated
pianist wife Clara, German composer Johannes Brahms and the renowned Hungarian
violinist Joseph Joachim.
1853
was an auspicious year for the four musicians, bringing them together in a bond
that continued to the end of their lives. The Schumanns conducted hundreds of
performances together during their careers, but that summer she wrote for him
her beautiful and charming “Three Romances” composition.
October
of the same year saw the composition of the FAE Sonata, a collaborative work
written as a gift for Joachim, incorporating the violin-virtuoso’s motto “frei
aber einsam,” free but lonely, threaded through each of the four movements in the
manner of a leitmotif. Schumann’s friend and student Albert Dietrich
contributed the first movement, Schumann the second and fourth movements,and
Brahms a Scherzo which remains the most famous movement of the sonata.
Other works include Robert Schumann’s haunting first sonata for piano and
violin, his elegiac Romances performed on trombone and Joachim’s tender and
impassioned “Romance Op. 2 No. 1.”
Gabrielle
Wunsch moved to Montana in her early teens, studying with former Montana State
University professor Johan Jonsson, and is excited to return for this
performance. She is equally at home on period and modern violins, and has
performed extensively in Europe, Asia and North America to great acclaim. She
lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, trombonist Bruce Chrisp,
who is principal trombone of seven Bay Area orchestras. He teaches
trombone at UC Davis, and plays regularly with the San Francisco Ballet and
Opera. Bobby Mitchell lives in Freiburg, Germany, and enjoys a varied and
eclectic career as concert pianist and chamber musician.
Tickets
for this concert are $15, $10 for seniors and students, and are available for
advance purchase at warrenmillerpac.org. Tickets will also be available at the
door.
