Ensemble Monterey presents
The Bach B Minor Mass Featuring Cantiamo! on May 1 and May 2

You're Invited to join us for the Season Finale Reception and Raffle immediately following the concert. Raffle tickets are available to purchase just prior to the concert and during intermission for $5 each or 5 for $20. Prizes include show tickets, wines, restaurant gift certificates, chocolates, lottery tickets & more – prizes that are sure to bring you enjoyment. Part of the fun is YOU get to choose which items you want to enter to win. Enter as many tickets as you want for all of the prizes! The Raffle Prize drawing will take place during the Reception just 15 minutes after the concert. Winners must be present to win.

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Ensemble Monterey Chamber Orchestra

Light Hearted-Winds 3rd Concert
Review by Nathalie Plotkin

For the third concert of the current season, the aptly named “Light-Hearted Winds” was another special treat for an appreciative audience. John Anderson added yet another innovative evening of rarely heard, (yet not to be missed) compositions for their musical experience.

Not only did it offer an opportunity to become acquainted with a most enjoyable variety of instrumental tone colors and combinations created by a group of first class wind instrument players, but it also featured some very pleasing and well chosen repertoire.

The wind octet was yet another facet of classical music making. It was brought to prominence by the Austrian Emperor Joseph II who formed his own private wind quintet in 1782. He employed the finest available players on each wind instrument to provide the customary entertainment music at various outdoor functions and during meals for the court.

This naturally required its own music and composers were happy to supply material. This consisted of original works for such an ensemble and also a large repertoire of operatic transcriptions much as Franz Liszt later created piano versions of the vocal music of his era.

A wind version of the “Overture to the Magic Flute” by Mozart opened the concert. It was for the standard wind octet called a “Harmonie” which consisted of two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons and two horns, with each having an individual musical line.

Led by music director John Anderson, the musicians playing carefully in tune and precisely in time, created an ensemble where one barely missed the strings, yet our ears were initially aware of the different tone quality being created. However, they adjusted as the familiar music wove its delightful web.

Then, as a very strong contrast, the “Divertimento in E Flat for Wind Octet” by Gordon Jacob, who was a prolific and popular English composer, is a very late example of the genre (1968) came next. In three movements which were often playful and humorous, it calls for highly skilled and well coordinated players and the group was well up to its virtuoso demands.

A brief and lovely “Rondino” by Beethoven elicited highly polished solo passages from clarinetist Erica Horn. She was joined by horn players John Orzel and Jeff Fowler.

Another fine classical work, Hummel’s “Octet Partita” was a delightfully witty and joyous example of “Entertainment” music. The playful rhythms and the obvious humor of the music called up dancing images and sprightly tunes.

As the summation of the octet experience, Mozart’s “Serenade in E Flat Major, K.375 had a very special and memorable quality. The intrinsic value of this masterpiece made it stand above the usual “entertainment” fare. Of the same quality as his late symphonies and concertos, it had a unity of purpose and quality that this fine group of musicians delivered with tonal and technical virtuosity.

The playing was smooth, very well phrased and displayed the refined precision of the ensemble work. The Alpine effect of the clarinets and horns, in the finale were exactly synchronized as they all but yodeled their way through Mozart’s musical sunshine.

Also participating with great skill and sensitive musicianship were oboists Peter Lemberg and Debbie Busch, clarinetist Jeff Gallagher and bassoonists Jane Orzel and Gail Selburn.

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