Harkness Chapel, known for its fine acoustics and intimate performance space, is the venue for the musical presentations of a three-part Russian Winter Music and Arts Festival. The festival starts on Nov. 15 from 4-5:30 p.m., when the Connecticut College Choirs (a collaboration of students, faculty and staff) perform works by Russian composers Rachmaninoff and Leontovich and Estonian composer Pärt. The concert is free and open to the public.
Sviridov’s Reveille from "A Pushkin Wreath," features baritone Maksim Ivanov, baritone, who will also sing a set of Russian songs by Borodin, Glinka, Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.
Other performances include Connecticut College student Elizabeth Jannery on saxophone, who will collaborate with adjunct piano instructor, Patrice Newman on "Sonata Sportive" by Tcherepnine.
Adjunct instructor Joshua Thomas on saxophone and guest Cara Cheung on cello will perform Edison Denisov’s "Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Cello." Ian Frenkel, adjunct instructor, will improvise on themes of Rachmaninov’s "Piano Concerto #3," Berlin’s "Russian Lullaby," and "Midnight in Moscow" by Soloviev-Sedoi.
Russian Music and Arts Festival continues on Dec. 3, 4
On Dec. 3 at 6 p.m., also in the chapel, the Russian Winter Music and Arts Festival continues with students and faculty performing the works of Tcherepnin, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Gliere.
The final festival program begins on Friday, Dec. 4 in the Charles Chu Room of Shain Library at 4:15 p.m., as Connecticut College students present on Russian Realist and modernist art, with respondent Molly Bunson of Yale University. A lecture by Emily Frey Giansiracusa of the University of Georgia, “Domestic Demon: Mikhail Lermontov and Anton Rubinstein,” begins at 7 p.m. in the Ernst Common Room.
The evening and the festival conclude with a return to Harkness Chapel, where faculty performances of the works of Lebedev, Rachmaninoff, Mussorgsky and Shostakovich will begin at 8 p.m.
All events are free and open to the public. The College’s departments of Music and Slavic studies are sponsoring the festival.