Thanks to you, 2024 has been a great year for HVCMC. We enjoyed a stellar trio of concerts, a primary goal. Our creative directors, Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson, gave us wonderful music, enlarging their quartet Espressivo! to become a quintet, performing well-known favorites as well as introducing us to the less familiar. With the return of the Isidore String Quartet and debut of the Balourdet Quartet, HVCMC once again championed young musicians, a tradition of which we are very proud. We are thrilled to have introduced these two ensembles to the Hudson Valley and look forward to inviting them back to play for us again as their careers flourish.

Click the “Learn More” button for more…

Please join us at Christopher & Claudine Klose’s lovely farm* for a memorable evening of music and merriment celebrating the launch of the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle’s 75th Anniversary Season. Enjoy wine, delicious snacks, and a musical performance by Bard Conservatory musicians curated by HVCMC Advisory Director, Joan Tower.

The evening’s musical program will feature TŌN musicians Sam Frois and Enikő Samu, violinists; Michael Halbrook, violist; and Emma Churchill, cellist, playing together as a sparkling string quartet in a program that will include works by Haydn and Beethoven.

We hope to see you there!

*address provided with ticket purchase*

Dear Friends and Supporters,

Now at the height of summer as we look back on another stellar Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle season, I would like to thank you for your invaluable patronage which makes what we do possible.

This past June we presented three concerts that were as distinctive as they were wonderful. Those of you who were with us can attest to the electricity in the hall each night:

• On June 8, our beloved music directors Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson, joined by their partners of Espressivo! and Sharon’s brother Harold Robinson on double bass, delighted with a quintet program that offered audience favorites alongside the rarely heard (see clips of their performance here).

• On June 15, the Isidore String Quartet, back by popular demand, enthralled with their blazing and precise sound (see clips of their performance here).

• And on June 22, the Balourdet Quartet, new friends with whom we can look forward to many more years of music-making, rewarded us with an encore in response to the exuberant enthusiasm of the audience for their playing (see clips of their performance here).

Looking ahead, we would like to direct your attention to our upcoming 75th Anniversary Season, which will be one of celebration beginning with a Fall Benefit on the afternoon of Saturday, October 5th, and continuing with a Gala Celebration in the Spring. The 2025 season also marks the 25th year of Jaime and Sharon’s artistic leadership and we look forward to celebrating them heartily. An additional highlight we plan to unveil during the 75th anniversary year is a short documentary we have been working on relating the history of HVCMC.

Finally, we have heard from many of you that Saturday nights are no longer as convenient for your concert-going as they once were. We are therefore moving our June performances to Sunday afternoons. They will continue to be held at Olin Hall on the Bard Campus. We anticipate that this scheduling change will allow us to appeal to a broader audience for whom the evening time made attendance difficult.

As always, it is thanks to you that HVCMC can continue to bring the finest chamber music ensembles to the Hudson Valley. With your participation, your generosity, and your support of our mission, we look forward to being able to persevere in bringing you the caliber of concerts you have come to appreciate and expect in the years ahead.

For those of you who couldn’t join us, please enjoy some highlights below.

I wish you all a happy summer and hope to see everyone several times in the coming year!

Christopher Scholz
President, HVCMC

Making their HVCMC debut, the prize-winning Balourdet Quartet is a recipient of a 2024 Avery Fisher Career Grant and Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award.  Recent highlights include debuts at Carnegie and Wigmore Halls, and new string quartets by composers Karim Al-Zand and Paul Novak through grants from Chamber Music America (2021) and the Barlow Foundation (2023).  Currently the Graduate Quartet in Residence at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University and recent graduates of the New England Conservatory’s Professional String Quartet Program, the Balourdet concert concludes HVCMC’s 2024 June Concert Series with the following program:

• Wolfgang Amadé Mozart: String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421
• Karim Al-Zand: Strange Machines, String Quartet No. 4 (Chamber Music America Commission 2022)
• Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1, “Razumovsky” 

 
Click the “Learn More” button to watch clips from their performance>>>

The highly acclaimed Isidore String Quartet was formed in 2019 with a vision to “revisit, rediscover, and reinvigorate” the repertory.  Heavily influenced by the idea of “approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established,” the quartet returns to HVCMC for a second consecutive season.  Their program this summer includes In Memory by Grammy Award-winning composer Joan Tower, composed in 2002 and dedicated in honor of the late Margaret Shafer, Artistic Director of HVCMC from 1977-2000:

• Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2
• Joan Tower: In Memory, String Quartet No. 2, dedicated to Margaret Shafer
• Ludwig van Beethoven: String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127 

 
Click the “Learn More” button to watch clips from their performance>>>

HVCMC Co-Artistic Directors Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson launch the season with their piano quartet Espressivo! Anna Polonsky (piano), Jaime Laredo (violin), Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt (viola), and Sharon Robinson (cello), are joined by award-winning bassist Harold “Hal” Robinson in the following program:

• Felix Mendelssohn: Piano Quartet in C Minor, Op. 1, No. 1
• Franz Schubert: Piano Quintet in A Major, “The Trout,” D. 667
• Ralph Vaughan Williams: Quintet in C Minor

 
Click the “Learn More” button to watch clips from their performance>>>

For our next season, we have lined up three wonderful Saturday evenings in June devoted to chamber music: Espressivo! on June 8, the Isidore String Quartet on June 15, and the Balourdet Quartet on June 22 (see individual Events below for details on each). You may purchase tickets to individual concerts or save on Subscription Tickets to all three! All three concerts will be held in Bard College’s acoustically exceptional Olin Hall.

Thank you to those of you who were able to join us and to those who supported us in so many ways for another successful Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle season. All of the stellar musicians who performed on the Olin Hall stage this year, whether joining HVCMC’s Artistic Directors Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson or appearing on our series for the first time, felt warmly welcomed and appreciated. Click the gray “Learn More” button on the lower right to see (and hear) some snippets of this year’s three grand performances in Bard’s Olin Hall.

We have a stellar line-up for our June 2024 Concert Series. You can view them on our Upcoming Events page and purchase tickets on our Tickets page. And with your support of our mission, your participation, and your generosity we will be able to continue to bring you the quality of concerts you have come to appreciate and expect in the years ahead.

Formed in 2022, TRIO SEOUL’s founding members — violinist Jinjoo Cho, cellist Brannon Cho, and pianist Kyu Yeon Kim — are winners and laureates of more than 20 international competitions and awards combined. The city of Seoul is a dynamic symbol of the ensemble’s cultural roots as well as their artistic intensity, which they’re sure to bring to their summer program at HVCMC:

• Dmitri Shostakovich:  Piano Trio No. 1 in C minor, Op. 8
• Cécile Chaminade:  Piano Trio No. 2 in A minor, Op. 34
• Uzong Choe:  Scattered Dreams
• Anton Arensky:  Piano Trio No. 1 in D minor, Op. 32

Four great artists with a passion for chamber music have formed an exciting new quartet that is bound to become an audience favorite. Anna Polonsky (piano), Jaime Laredo (violin), Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt (viola), and Sharon Robinson (cello) are all known for wonderfully expressive playing, so ESPRESSIVO! was the perfect name for this new quartet of piano and strings. HVCMC is delighted to have our Artistic Directors, Jaime and Sharon, kick off the season with their new quartet and the following program:

• Rebecca Clarke:  Morpheus for viola and piano
• Gabriel Fauré:  Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15
• Johannes Brahms:  Piano Quartet No. 2 in A major, Op. 26

Thank you to everyone who joined us for our 70th Anniversary Gala at the magical Astor Dairy Barns ! With your help and support, the Hudson Valley Chamber Music Circle can continue its mission of bringing exceptional chamber music to the Hudson Valley, celebrating works from the chamber music canon and championing young musicians and composers.

We are grateful to violinist Jennifer Koh for her performance of works by J.S. Bach and Missy Mazzoli, and to our sponsors, Board of Directors, and brave guests who, despite the weather, made the day a shining success! Indeed, in the words of Kevin McEneaney of The Millbrook Independent :

“This concert was nearly an out-of-body experience.”

Featuring Jamie Laredo (violin), Sharon Robinson (cello), Benjamin Hochman (piano), and Nokuthula Ngwenyama (viola)

Mozart: Piano Quartet in E–flat Major, K.493
Nokuthula Ngwenyama: ELEGY
Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1, Op.25