Welcome to our March Newsletter!

For those of you might who live on a dirt road, the approach of Spring includes a fifth season, lovingly called Mud Season! Recent snows have added to the slush and muck. However, Spring is distinctly in the air and with it comes Sarasa's March concert-set, “All About my Mother"!

UP NEXT: "All About My Mother”

We are getting excited to present to you a wonderful program dedicated to mothers and motherhood viewed through the musical lens of Matthew Locke, Antonín Dvořák, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Gustav Mahler and George Gershwin.

Friday, March 17th @7:30pm - Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church, Cambridge*
Saturday, March 18th @7pm - Brattleboro Music Center, Brattleboro*
Sunday, March 19th @3:30pm - Follen Community Church, Lexington

*Please note: our usual concert days for the Cambridge & Brattleboro venues are switched for this program.

Tickets & Info

Fanny vs felix

**Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, 1842)**

Fanny Hensel, née Mendelssohn (1805-1847) has increasingly received much deserved praise, both for her compositional output and recognition of her virtuosity on the piano. Since archives in the former East Germany opened up to researchers, Fanny’s re-discovered and re-published works show her talents to be as formidable as her more famous and precocious younger brother, Felix Mendelssohn. Some pieces thought to be from his pen are in fact by his older sister.

Fanny's virtuosity on the piano evidently equaled, if not surpassed, that of her brother. She had memorized and performed J.S. Bach’s entire Well-Tempered Clavier by the age of 12. Sadly, hopes of becoming a recognized performer and composer were put on ice: societal constraints at the time precluded women from pursuing musical professions. This harsh reality was made clear by Fanny's father Abraham in an 1820 letter to her, in which he famously states that while music will perhaps become Felix's profession, "for you it can and must only be an ornament, never the basis of your being and doing.” Sarasa aims to counter that claim, and show off her talents with her striking String Quartet in E-flat major, which finishes with a boisterous and energetic finale.

Listening corner: Favorite Lullabies

What is your favorite lullaby? Every country has a traditional lullaby, sung to soothe (or lull) a child to sleep. It is an instinctive aspect of motherhood, rocking a baby to sleep with a simple song, to help keep the child from crying or to assuage fears associated with nighttime. There are two lullabies featured in our upcoming program. One is a gentle rocking Lullaby for String Quartet by George Gershwin (1898-1937), composed in 1919 as part of a composition exercise.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) eases into a peaceful lullaby at the very end of the grief-laden narrative Kindertotenlieder, a song cycle he set to the poetry of the German writer, Friedrich Rückert. Mahler brings a stormy musical climax to a hopeful, even transcendental repose with a lullaby, inspired by the final stanza:

“Frightened by no storm,
Protected by God’s hand,
They rest, as if in their mother’s house!”

— Quote Friedrich Rückert

The mother tree:

The Mother Tree in a forest looms large, is gnarled, and looks very wise. Below are photos taken in Summer and Autumn of the same Mother Maple Tree three years in a row. Sadly this majestic tree is slowly dying, yet her seeds have spread, and created many new maple saplings, some of which may not survive if there is not enough breathing room. The sugar maple grove is especially resplendent where winds from the west help disperse the little spiral-shaped maple seedpods to the ground to take root.

Rings ist der Wald so stumm und still ~ All around the woods are so still and silent

As a nice segue, here is one of Dvorak's Gypsy songs, which we will be performing on our next concert-set: a beautiful, contemplative setting about finding solace in the silence and stillness of the forest. Sung in German by Anne Sofie von Otter with pianist Bengt Forsberg: