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Chamber Music
by Candlelight

Announcing Our 30th Anniversay Season:

Three Programs of
Ground-Breaking Music

JS Bach portrait by Hausman

To celebrate its thirtieth year of fine early music concerts, CSEM is proud to announce an All-Bach Season, the final concert of which will coincide with the 326th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach’s birthday. Featured artists will include three past recipients of CSEM’s distinguished Erwin Bodky Award. The season opens November 11-15, 2010, with Ingrid Matthews (Bodky Laureate 1989), violin, and Byron Schenkman (Bodky Laureate 1999), harpsichord, performing Bach’s sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord. For the second series of concerts (January 20-24, 2011) Nicholas Kitchen, violin, will present the complete cycle of Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin over two dates, January 20-21 and 22-23, and in its entirety on January 24.  For the grand finale of the season, Peter Sykes (Bodky Laureate 1993), harpsichord, will perform the complete Goldberg Variations on March 17-21, 2011, with a gala reception and birthday party to follow the final concert.

Season Subscriptions are still only $70 for all three concerts. That's a savings of $20 over the single-ticket price.

Students attend FREE!
All students with ID, and all children 17 years and younger, are admitted without charge to all Chamber Music by Candlelight concerts.


 


Bach the Innovator

Johann Sebastian Bach is undisputed as a towering figure in the history of music, but in his own lifetime, many of his contemporaries viewed him as a master of a bygone era – an “old fogey” – and immediately after his death his works began to slip into obscurity, to be forgotten for nearly a century. Today, while most scholars recognize him as the composer who brought the Baroque style to its highest pinnacle of development, many listeners think of his music as beautiful but a bit off-putting: arcane, intellectual, and deeply conservative. The performers on this year’s Chamber Music by Candlelight series hope to convince you that old Sebastian was in fact a brilliant innovator, whose daring explorations of form and harmony are still exciting, even shocking, to modern ears. Come listen for yourself, and let us know what you think!

Next Event

November 11-15, 2010: Ingrid Matthews, violin, and Byron Schenkman, harpsichord

Ingrid Matthews and Byron Schenkman

Co-founders of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and the award-winning chamber ensemble La Luna, Ingrid Matthews (Bodky Laureate 1989) and Byron Schenkman (Bodky Laureate 1999) have performed all over the world and on numerous highly-acclaimed recordings of 17th and 18th century music. Their playing, both separately and together, has been lauded as “exuberant,” “alluring,” “phenomenal” and “astonishing.”

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Our Mission

The mission of The Cambridge Society for Early Music, founded in 1952 by the noted harpsichordist and musicologist Erwin Bodky, is to entertain, enlighten, educate and, in general, promote the rich musical culture of five centuries of Western music from the Middle Ages to the early nineteenth century. Since 1980 CSEM’s Chamber Music by Candlelight concert series has brought distinguished international artists and ensembles to intimate and elegant venues in five towns around the greater Boston area. Come experience — up close! — the thrill of music from another world and time.


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