Members of the Enescu Octet perform at USM’s Hannaford Hall during the 2019 Portland Chamber Music Festival. Photo by Aaron Flacke
As it tries to attract audiences still wary of the pandemic, the Portland Chamber Music Festival has made a few changes in its 29th year.
For the first time, the festival will feature an ensemble-in-residence, the East Coast Chamber Orchestra, whose members will anchor two of the four main concerts at Hannaford Hall on the University of Southern Maine campus.
The orchestra is made up of more than a dozen musicians from all over the East Coast – many of whom are from other prestigious orchestras or chamber music groups – who come together for a different performance each year. Four members of the orchestra – violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel and cellist Daniel McDonough – form the famous Jupiter String Quartet.
The festival will also host the trio Time of Three, made up of Nicolas Kendall, Charles Yang and Ranaan Meyer, whose sound blurs the boundaries of classic and pop.
Festival director Alice Kornhauser said late last month that organizers don’t yet know what to expect from this year’s event.
“Sales have been softer than in previous years,” he said. “It’s not a surprise. I think over the last 10 years we’ve seen a trend of going later and later buying, so we may not know until we get to the day of each show.
“We have increased our efforts to bring in new audiences,” he added.
Raman Ramakrishnan (left, on cello) is one of several musicians returning to this year’s Portland Chamber Music Festival. Due to the Portland Chamber Music Festival.
Festivals for years have been open to those 21 and under as a way to encourage young people to be exposed to old music. New this year, the festival is also offering an introductory price of $25 for early entrants. That’s $20 less than a regular admission ticket.
Chamber music is, in simple terms, classical music without an orchestra, with each performer usually responsible for a part of the composition. Melissa Reardon, the festival’s director, said that chamber music is, to paraphrase German composer Gustav Mahler, “meaning to be listened to in a small space with a small audience.”
“But more than that, chamber music is the deep music that comes from ensembles that have been playing together for decades, and then the bright, spontaneous music that comes from individual virtuoso players playing together for the first time,” he said.
This year’s festival kicks off Sunday with the annual benefit to Cove Street Arts in Portland that will feature music.
The first big show, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 11, will feature the East Coast Chamber Orchestra and pianist Henry Kramer, a native of Cape Elizabeth. Other concerts will be held in Aug. 13, 18 and 20 at Hannaford Hall. All of the main-stage concerts will be free-to-air.
A separate concert featuring Time for Three will be held on Friday, August. 19, at One Longfellow Square.
This year’s festival will offer a diverse mix of classical pieces from composers such as Brahms and Tchaikovsky to more modern, experimental sounds.
“We’ve found the Portland audience to be incredibly open and generous in their taste,” Kornhauser said. “Everyone wants to hear something that they know, that they have heard before, like a Schubert or a Beethoven symphony. That is usually something that they will respond to. But from the first day, we have shown contemporary music as part of our program, and we always get responses, even from people who don’t want to.
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