ARCA Presents: Piano Quintet Masterpieces with David Allen Wehr
David Allen Wehr
Allegheny RiverStone Center for the Arts opens its 2023 classical season with the perfect, Spring-time chamber music program on Sunday, March 5, at 2 PM in Lincoln Hall with sublime music making by world-class artists as international competition winner, David Allen Wehr returns with an ensemble of musicians from the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Duquesne University from his acclaimed and sold out “Music on the Bluff” series in Pittsburgh.
They will perform two exuberant and extroverted piano quintet masterpieces representing the pinnacle of chamber music repertoire: Franz Schubert’s “The Trout” based on the song of the same name and Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in E flat major.
Wehr’s distinguished colleagues include Marylene Gingras-Roy, viola (Pittsburgh Symphony); Adam Liu, cello (Assistant Principal Cello, Pittsburgh Symphony); Aaron White, contrabass (Bass, Pittsburgh Symphony); Charles Stegeman, violin (Concertmaster, Pittsburgh Opera/Ballet Orchestra); and Rachel Stegeman, violin (Concertmaster, Youngstown and Wheeling Symphonies). Mezzo soprano Katherine Soroka will sing in English the song on which Schubert’s fourth movement variations are based – his song “Die Forelle” or “The Trout”.
Tickets are Adults $30, ARCA Members $25, Students $5. Buy online at alleghenyriverstone.org or call 724-659-3153 to reserve and pay with cash or check at the door.
A favorite of Foxburg audiences, David Allen Wehr will also serve as the program host, providing enlightening and delightful insights on the music and the composers. No one does it better!
David’s international career was launched when he won the Gold Medal at the 1987 Santander International Piano Competition in Spain. Resulting tours have taken him to over 30 countries in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, including performances in the musical capitals of New York, London, Paris, Vienna, Washington, Madrid and Buenos Aires
Wehr’s November 2022 all-Chopin concert in Lincoln Hall was exquisite – during which he told the raptly attentive audience that he was inspired by their listening… a concert to be forever remembered. It could be said of his November 2021 two-piano performance with Cynthia Raim of Rachmaninoff duets that gleaned them the 1998 Recording of the Year for the American Record Guide, that on that day – anywhere in the music capitals of the world – there was no more exultant performance of classical music. It was breathtaking.
Known for his ability as a “Living Program Note”, David’s warm personality welcomes listeners into the emotion of the music and makes imaginative and simple the intricacies of glorious works of master composers. It was David’s thirteen seasons touring the United States and Canada for Community Concerts as a soloist and in chamber music partnerships that honed his unique ability to make great music accessible to the public.
The famous Piano Quintet in A Major is written for the unusual combination of piano, violin, viola, cello AND contrabass. The fourth movement of Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet – Theme and Variations - is based on Schubert’s charming song, “Die Forelle” or “The Trout,” which tells the story of a trout’s demise from the vantage point of a sympathetic by-stander. Mezzo soprano Katherine Soroka will perform the song on which it is based in English with pianist David Allen Wehr prior to the quintet performance.
Concluding the program is Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet in A Major – one of the finest chamber music works of the nineteenth century. The work, which revolutionized the piano quintet instrumentation and established it as quintessentially “Romantic”, was dedicated to his wife and great pianist, Clara Schumann, who pronounced the work, “full of vigor and freshness”.
Indeed, both will be musical harbingers of Spring!