How many violists does it take to induce mania? Yinzi Kong seemed to think that nine would be enough when she programmed “Violamania!” for the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta. The program consisted of nine pieces arranged for viola ensembles of sizes ranging from solo to eight, with occasional accompaniment from piano or harpsichord.
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The Emory Chamber Music Association’s Cooke Noontime Concert Series held at the Carlos Museum is a bit challenging to attend. First of all, it’s at noon on a workday. Secondly, there are two or three buses of residents from retirement homes who get there at around 11:20a and take up more than 75% of the seats and the remaining 25% are generally gone by 11:40a. So you pretty much have to be available for two hours in the middle of a workday, plus you have to pay for parking at a university campus that’s probably nowhere near anywhere you need to be. Then you only get a one hour concert that is often just a collection of single movements extracted from larger works. Generally, it’s not worth it for me to go but, still, if I have the time then I often find myself there wondering how concerned I should be about my addiction to live music. Today, though, was worth it. I had reason to take the day off and got there around 11:15a and, after waiting in the hallway of the third floor of the Museum with the exits all blocked by the crowd until the doors opened at 11:30a, I was able to get a fairly decent seat to hear what turned out to be a pretty amazing concert by cellist Matt Haimovitz and violinist Tim Fain.
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The Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta opened the Emerson Series with a concert of all Beethoven music cleverly titled “Beethoven’s Fifth.” It featured two of his early works, the violin sonata no. 5 (the Spring Sonata) and string quartet no. 5, as well as an orchestration of Beethoven’s symphony no. 5 for piano with four hands.
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One of the things that I really like about the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta is the way that their concerts are generally programmed with some kind of thread that connects the various pieces being played. The programs often span multiple musical periods but always manage to remain coherent, with some kind of conceptual or musical thematic connection. Tonight’s program for the Vega String Quartet was no exception; the evening began with a piece by the Classical composer Hayden, ended with a Romantic era piece by his student, Beethoven, and sandwiched in-between was an early 20th century modernist piece by Janacek that references a Beethoven sonata.
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