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.
