Arts Performing Arts

Tryon Concert Association Sponsors Lincoln Center Virtual Series

Tryon Concert Association

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Photo by Tristan Cook

The Tryon Concert Association (TCA) presents its 66th season as a series of performances from the Chamber Music Society (CMS) of Lincoln Center available for free viewing on the TCA website. The series, Front Row: National, includes five performances by world-class CMS musicians.

“The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, which counts many of this country’s finest and most noteworthy performers among its members, has made its archives of recent past performances available to us so that our audience can view high-definition, first-class classical music concerts in the comfort of their homes,” says TCA president, Kymric Mahnke. “We are interested to see the audience response.”

The series begins with pianist Gloria Chien performing works by Field, Liszt and Mendelssohn. The concert is available for viewing from Wednesday, October 28, through November 1. “This music is at the height of 19th-century Romanticism,” says Mahnke. “It was Field’s Nocturnes which inspired Chopin to compose his well-known works of the same title.”

Field’s piece is complimented by that of Liszt, a composer whose brilliance and originality, according to Mahnke, is often overshadowed by his dominance as a pianist; and that of Mendelssohn, who was arguably the greatest child prodigy of the 19th century. “His precociousness was truly on the level of Mozart’s,” says Mahnke. “Listeners will be amazed that a 13-year-old could compose such work.”

The remaining four concerts in the series are: clarinetist David Shifrin performing Mozart, Bassi and Ellington, November 25–29; pianist Gilbert Kalish performing Crumb, Schubert and Brahms, February 24–28; violinist Cho-Liang Lin performing Foss, Dvorák and Tchaikovsky, March 24–28; and pianists Alessio Bax and Lucille Chung performing Mozart and Bartók with other members of the CMS, April 28 through May 2.

The CMS has more than 100 world-class musicians in its membership and is currently celebrating its 50th anniversary in association with the Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center. It is said to draw more people to chamber music than any other organization of its kind. Its repertoire includes the finest works from the Renaissance through the present day and during its half century of activity it has commissioned more than 160 new works from such composers as Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Alberto Ginastera, Darius Milhaud and Chen Yi.

For more information about the performances, including the program notes, visit TryonConcerts.org.

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