Just released, Notable Excitement: 30 years of Music at Kohl Mansion by Liz Dossa recounts the captivating history of the longest-running chamber music series on the San Francisco Peninsula. The setting of Kohl Mansion is unmatched for music—both glorious and warm. Notable Excitement captures the charm of the historic mansion and the challenges of creating a lasting arts organization which has featured musicians of international stature.
Read the introduction by The Alexander String Quartet:
The Alexander String Quartet remains deeply grateful for our frequent exposure to Music at Kohl Mansion’s invigorating and appreciative concert audiences. The Great Hall is an inspiring, even an almost divine, space in which to commune through music—bringing the composer and the listener together in an ideal environment. The combination of pre-concert talks with the post-concert social exchange between performers and listeners is simply unmatched. This uniquely crafted experience with the ‘‘main event’’ sandwiched between, affords the opportunity to practically channel the composers themselves into the encounter—a heady mix indeed.
Over the more than two decades we’ve been affiliated with MAKM, we have essayed some programming that another venue would perhaps never have hosted. A celebration of the later chamber works of Brahms, including both viola quintets with our friend Toby Appel, comes to mind. We had the chance most recently to join with Anne-Marie McDermott, one of the very
finest and most distinguished keyboardists of our generation, in a program that ranged from early Haydn, through Mozart to Schumann. It might have been enough for any other presenter to transport subscribers through such breathtaking revelations in style and consciousness. Both these evenings also included ‘‘Overtures’’ with Young Chamber Musicians raising the curtain on the evening, demonstrating in the most potent manner I know, how healthily and fully MAKM embraces its role as curator and nurturer of live chamber
music in our lives and communities.
It is a privilege to be able to participate in this bigger picture where everyone has an interdependent role to play. Music at Kohl Mansion fulfills its role, succeeding every day through its ministrations to the Peninsula school districts, in lifting music into the realm of the extraordinary. Thanks to MAKM, we in this community are all enabled and enjoined to play our respective roles.
There is no better way to underscore, in the words of Michelle Obama, that ‘‘… the arts are not extra. Rather, they are a part of our national lives … a form of diplomacy in which we can all take part.’’
—Sandy Wilson for the Alexander String Quartet
Sunday, November 10, 2013
7:00 pm
Music at Kohl
The Great Hall
Burlingame, California
Tel: (650) 762-1130
Web: www.musicatkohl.org
Program:
Britten Quartet No. 2 in C, Op. 36
Brahms Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 with pianist, Joyce Yang