Cape Symphony Presents is proud to host an extraordinary chamber music festival at our Falmouth campus. This year’s Cosmos Sessions feature cello and clarinet quintets specially selected by Cape Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Jae Cosmos Lee to ignite your senses in all the best ways. “I love chamber music dearly, and feel very fortunate to present these pieces,” he says.
The festival is a two-evening event. Thursday, June 5, you’ll hear Luigi Boccherini’s Cello Quintet in C Minor (“Opera Grande”), Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Clarinet Quintet, and Franz Schubert’s Cello Quintet in C Major. Saturday, June 7 brings Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s Clarinet Quintet, Reena Esmail’s Teen Murti for Cello Quintet, and Johannes Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet in B Minor. Both performances begin at 7:00 PM.
The Schubert and Brahms quintets that anchor each evening’s program are beloved “desert island” pieces. For musicians, they are no less sublime for their familiarity. “That’s the beauty of learning your craft,” says Jae of his longtime love for this music. “It becomes part of your fabric as a person.” Both pieces were written at the end of the composers’ lives. Schubert’s Cello Quintet, considered one of the greatest works in all of chamber music, was composed in 1828 just two months before he died at 31; he never heard it performed. Brahms, says Jae, “definitely had a muse. He came out of retirement [in 1891] to write this piece for clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld after seeing him play.”
Discussing the Cosmos Sessions repertoire, Jae says “It was important to me that these programs feel balanced, giving the ear a lot of interest as we go from one piece to another. The Schubert and Brahms are immortal pieces. I also wanted to include great music by living and underrepresented composers.”
Each concert begins with works you might not yet know. Italian virtuoso cellist Luigi Boccherini’s Cello Quintet in C Minor is one of his best, says Jae, and makes a perfect opening to Thursday’s program. Celebrated composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, now 86, is the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Music, and the first woman to earn a doctorate in Composition from Juilliard. Her Clarinet Quintet rounds out the first half of the night.
Saturday’s performance opens with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s beautiful Clarinet Quintet, which he wrote in 1895 at age 20. “Being Black at that time meant your music was a novelty,” reflects Jae. “White musicians called Coleridge-Taylor ‘The African Mahler’… those were regrettable times in terms of what was played and what was favored.” Indian American composer Reena Esmail, born in 1983, works between the worlds of Indian and Western classical music. The title “Teen Murti” means “Three Statues” in Hindi; the music was inspired by the residence of India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.
The Cosmos Sessions ensemble is: Jae Cosmos Lee, violin; Yuri Namkung, violin; Danielle Farina, viola; Jacques Lee Wood, cello; Kee-Hyun Kim, cello; and William Amsel, clarinet. Their rare talent, skill, and mutual esteem deepen and elevate each performance. These will be very special experiences.
Join us for either or both nights of Cosmos Sessions. You’ll come away with your ears and mind gratified, and your heart full. “Think of it like dinner by a celebrity chef,” concludes Jae. “Each course is a sublime treat, all part of a beautiful whole.”
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Cape Symphony’s Falmouth campus is located at 60 Highfield Drive. Tickets to each Cosmos Sessions performance are just $25, available through Eventbrite or at the door. Email
