The Union City Chamber Players are back at Arts at St. John's this Sunday, February 10th at 3 p.m. Featuring violinist Peter Borten, mezzo-soprano Bernadette LaFond and pianist Marina Korsakova-Kreyn
Especially if you're in to "Rach" music.
This may sound like quite a departure from our favorite neighborhood classical music group, The Union City Chamber Players. However, they do have some experience performing this type of music every now and then. Peter Borten, founder of the Union City Players, has been known to blast "Rach" in his car stereo after the kids are dropped off for school in the morning. He likes to crank it!
This is why you must attend the concert this Sunday, February 10th at 3 p.m. Cause man, If you love Rach' or rather Rachmaninoff, you're in for a pre-Valentine's Day treat. Young love at its most dramatic can only be best expressed by a horny teenage boy during the turn-of-the-century.
In the words of Peter Borten
"Oh, gentle feelings, soft sounds, the goodness and the gradual stilling of a soul that has been moved; the melting happiness of the first tender, touching joys of love—where are you? Where are you?" exclaims Turgenev in First Love. Rachmaninoff wrote both of the songs we are performing this Sunday at the age of 17 and in the throes of his first love—a summer romance in 1890 with the bewitching 15-year-old Vera Skalon, a close friend of his cousin and future wife, Natalya Satina (then only 13). All of them were staying at Ivanovka, the bucolic country estate belonging to Natalya’s aristocratic family, playing music constantly and enjoying rural pleasures. Ivanovka became Rachmaninoff’s refuge for the next several decades, until he emigrated to America in the wake of the 1917 revolution.
Vera (left) and Natalya at about the time Rachmaninoff met Vera.
Rachmaninoff’s feelings for Vera unleashed a compositional outburst, and he dedicated a Romance as well as the song In the Silence of the Secret Night, with a text by Fet, to her:
O, long in the silence of the secret night
I hear your subtle whisp’ring, see your easy glance…
I am drunk, and against all reason
I’ll wake the silent night with your beloved name!
When the couple was discovered holding hands, Rachmaninoff was forbidden to write to her; after the summer, he sent his messages to Vera, whom he affectionately called his “little psychopath,” through her older sister. Although he would eventually marry his cousin Natalya (to whom the other song on our program was dedicated), Rachmaninoff wrote nearly a hundred letters to Vera and was devastated by her marriage. Shortly before her death at the age of 34, Vera burned all of the composer’s letters.
Asked once about the source of his inspiration, Rachmaninoff replied, ““Love. Love – this is a never fading source of inspiration. It inspires like nothing else. To love means to combine happiness and force of the mind. It becomes a stimulus for the flourishing of intellectual energy, and as such – for creativity.”
Call me old-fashioned but if my daughter got a letter from a young man, referring to her as his "little psychopath" a restraining order would be on my to-do list. Ahh teenagers!! You gotta love 'em and you gotta bring them to this concert. Other musical compositions include works by Mozart, Gounod, Strauss, Massenet and Faure´. Bring your sweethearts or your sweet self. The donation is $8 and children are free. Wine and scrumptious things will be on hand to eat afterward.
