The Kennebec Early Music Festival is pleased to announce its Third Season of Chamber Music Concerts on Period Instruments for August 11th–18th. The Festival will feature the Dynamic Artistry of Seven Musicians of National and International Renown from Seattle, Boston, and Bath performing the Music of Bach, Vivaldi, Couperin, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, Schubert and other masters as it should be heard – on the historic instruments they knew, played and loved.

Evenings at 7:30 pm, Sundays at 3 pm

The Festival will take place in the majestic Long Reach Hall of the Maine Maritime Museum, 243 Washington Street, in Bath and the intimate Linden Tree Meeting House, 10 Church Lane, in Phippsburg.

Tickets are available for $25 general admission, $20 seniors, $10 students and young adults (ages 17–25) on the Festival’s website www.kemfmaine.org. “Kid’s Come Free” (ages 7–16 with one accompanying adult per child).

NOTE – This concert is also being performed on Tuesday, August 13th, in the Long Reach Room of the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, ME (see our separate link for this performance: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4256900)

BACH &

A BACH LOVER’S DELIGHT! Enjoy the music of the Bachs, father and son, and their good friend Telemann as Susanna Ogata, 1772 Klotz violin, Sarah Freiberg, 1784 Merlin violoncello, and Tamara Friedman, 1780 South German Fortepiano, serve up an overture, a rondo, fantasias, and suites of dances from late Baroque Germany.

THE PROGRAM

J. S. Bach – Ouvertüre from the Partita No. 4 in D major for Fortepiano, BWV 828

Georg Philipp Telemann – Two Fantasias for Solo Violin, TWV 40:16 and 18

J. S. Bach – Suite No. 3 in C major for Solo Violoncello, BWV 1009

Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach – Rondo in C Minor for Fortepiano, Wq. 59 No. 4

J. S. Bach – Partita No. 3 in E major for Solo Violin, BWV 1006

THE INSTRUMENTS

Susanna Ogata’s violin was made in 1772 by Joseph Klotz of a well-known family of luthiers in Mittenwald, Germany. Mozart owned a Joseph Klotz violin.

Sarah Freiberg’s violoncello was crafted by John Joseph Merlin (London, 1784), an ingenious mechanic whose inventions included various types of intricate clocks and automata, a perpetual motion machine, inline skates, and mathematical and keyboard instruments which he displayed in Merlin’s Mechanical Museum in London.

Tamara Friedman’s fortepiano is a replica of an instrument by Johann Andreas Stein (Augsburg, early 1780s), built and revised by several craftsmen. In 1777 Mozart wrote home to his father very enthusiastically about Stein’s fortepianos.

THE MUSICIANS

Violinist SUSANNA OGATA enjoys an active performance schedule in greater New England and beyond. She has been praised for “totally convincing, spontaneous and free-flowing playing” (The Berkshire Review), “her musical sensitivity and fire” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), and “playing of electrifying energy, awesome technical command, and rollicking dialogue” (Arts Fuse Magazine) where her concert appearance was distinguished as best solo performance of 2016. Her first recording in a complete set of Beethoven’s violin sonatas gained acclaim from the New York Times for “elegant readings that are attentive to quicksilver changes in dynamics and articulation.” Their performance of the Sonata No. 4 in A minor is “darkly playful,” their Kreutzer Sonata “brilliant and stormy.” The BBC Music Magazine has praised the recording for its ‘altogether compelling performances and the music for being always vividly characterized,” and further pronounced that “the atmosphere of excitement in both works is very well captured by Susanna Ogata and Ian Watson.” Susanna is a tenured member of the venerable Handel and Haydn Society in Boston and was recently appointed as Assistant Concertmaster of the orchestra. She has served on the violin faculty of the Longy School of Music, and is a founding member of the Boston Classical Trio, the Copley String Quartet, and the Coriolan String Quartet.

Enjoy Susanna’s playing at https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/og/164250f2bc566885?projector=1

SARAH FREIBERG is principal cellist of Boston Baroque and a tenured member of the Handel and Haydn Society. She has performed with the New York Collegium, the Philharmonia (San Francisco), Portland (Oregon), and Seattle Baroque Orchestras, the Boston Early Music Festival, and Arion (Montreal). As a corresponding editor for Strings magazine, she has contributed dozens of articles and reviews on a wide range of subjects. Sarah edited the long-forgotten Guerini cello sonatas for both PRB Productions and Broude Brothers, and recorded both Guerini and Laurenti cello sonatas for Centaur. As well as teaching in the Historical Performance department at Boston University, she is Chair of Strings and Chamber Music at the Powers Music School in Belmont and teaches at the Amherst Early Music Festival. Sarah can be heard on numerous recordings, including as soloist on the Boston Baroque CD of works by Vivaldi and Geminiani.

Enjoy Sarah’s playing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGkg5fbfUuc and www.sarahfreiberg.com

Pianist TAMARA FRIEDMAN, praised for the depth, wit, and humor of her performances (Seattle Times), attended the Oberlin Conservatory and received her master’s degree from the Mannes College of Music (NYC). She has collaborated with such artists as Stanley Ritchie, Jaap Schröder, and Max van Egmond, and appears with violinist Elizabeth Blumenstock as Duo Amadeus. In the Pacific Northwest she has performed on the Seattle Camerata, Allegro Baroque and Beyond, Belle Arte, Early Music Guild, Gallery Concerts, and Mostly Nordic series and for the Governor’s Chamber Music Festival. Tamara has been the featured performer in early piano workshops for Pacific Lutheran University (Tacoma, WA) and the Western Early Keyboard Association, and maintains a private studio in Seattle, where she teaches modern piano and fortepiano on the collection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century keyboard instruments on display at SEKM! – the Skagit Early Keyboard Museum. Her summers are spent in Bath, Maine, where she also has a group of historic pianos.

Enjoy Tamara’s playing at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iIrBWKV1nk

The Kennebec Early Music Festival is supported by grants from the

MAINE ARTS COMMISSION
EDGARD AND GERALDINE FEDER FOUNDATION
GEORGE P. DAVENPORT TRUST FUND
BATH SAVINGS TRUST COMPANY
WILLIAM RAVEIS/CARLETON REAL ESTATE