The St. Catharines Chamber Music Society

The St. Catharines Chamber Music Society was held at the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre of Brock University in Saint Catharines at 7:30 p.m., on Friday, 18th January, 2013. The four performers mostly showing on the stage, Xiaoling Li, Andrée Simard, Gordon Cleland, Karin Di Bella are violinist, violist, violoncellist, pianist respectively. Then, the soprano Charlotte Knight joined the performance to present us a wonderful and colorful music. The stage in the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre is surrounded by cambered audience seats with five parts separated by four aisles. At the center of the stage, a piano for the concert stands there quietly. When spotlight falls on the piano, the grace of classical music arises in the audience’s hearts, which makes them relaxed and expectant.
The first half of the program included two pieces, Piano Quartet in E-flat major, K. 493 composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Die Gebüsche composed by Franz Schubert. The most impressive piece for me was the first one. It was a chamber music from classical period. This concerto-like quartet had three movements, which gave us an echoing through the performance. There was a material between piano and strings that changes along the piece. The first movement was a sonata-form Allegro. A bright and genial opening establishes the major tone of the entire piece. This sonata-allegro also had a lot of narrow leaps which allows me feel lively. The second movement Larghetto was like a rapt dialogue between piano and strings. It started with solo piano. Then, it has a downcast and made me fell leisure. The third movement Allegretto was the finale of the piece, which has a moderately paced rondo. The characteristics of classical music include symmetrical, balanced phrases melody, dance rhythms, diatonic, tonic-dominant harmony, multimovement sonata-allegro form and homophonic. The violin tonic-dominant and the form of homophonic allowed me ensure that the piece is composed in Classical ear, but not from Baroque