BSR Classical Music Interludes, April 2023

Three April concerts with Artcinia

This busy presenter’s Music in Your Neighborhood series has three classical concerts in April, widely varied in content and spanning the region.

Sounds of the Future: The Chamber Music of Ajibola Rivers
Saturday April 1, 2pm
Calvary-St. Augustine Episcopal Church, 814 North 41st Street, Philadelphia

This concert merges jazz and classical music in works by Ajibola Rivers, the Nigerian American cellist, bass guitarist, composer, and arranger from Lafayette Hill. The Ajibola Rivers Quintet will play—it’s a standard string quartet and double bass—with Irina Rostomashvili and Alberta Douglas (violins), Akhmed Manedov (viola), Rivers (cello), and Brent Edmonson (bass).

Pyxis Piano Trio
Thursday, April 13, 7pm
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 36 Ardmore Avenue, Ardmore

Pyxis Piano Trio members Luigi Mazzocchi (violin), Jie Jin (cello), and Hiroko Yamazaki (piano) have been regulars in Artcinia’s concert series. This month they’ll be heard on the Main Line, playing Maurice Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello and the Piano Trio in C Major by Johannes Brahms, which premiered in 1882 with the composer at the piano.

Four Seasons and More
Sunday, April 16, 2pm
Church of St. Anne, 2328 East Lehigh Avenue, Philadelphia

This all-Vivaldi concert features three violinists (Luigi Mazzocchi, Gared Crawford, and Hyojung Samantha Crawford), violist Joseph Kauffman, cellist Jie Jin, and Joyce Chen on harpsichord. They’ll be in Port Richmond to play this great composer’s Sonata for Violin in B-Flat (RV76), his Concerto for Three Violins (RV551), and the iconic, beloved work The Four Seasons.

Music at the Mansion
Sunday April 2, 2pm
Hamilton Mansion at the Woodlands, 4000 Woodland Avenue, West Philadelphia

This concert features compositions of the Federal era when The Woodlands was a center for Philadelphia’s civic, social, and botanical life. Musicians Amy Leonard (viola), Rainer Beckmann (recorder), Donna Fournier (viola da gamba), and Marcia Kravis (harpsichord) play works by Handel and the music of Henry Purcell (from the 2005 film Pride and Prejudice). They’ll also visit works by less familiar names like James Oswald, whose Airs for the Seasons celebrates flowers; and Ignatius Sancho, an 18th century Black British composer/abolitionist with a remarkable history.

Philadelphia Orchestra Digital Stage
Available to stream April 12-19

This season, the Philadelphia Orchestra has joined the online community with their Digital Stage. Each offering features a real-time performance premiere along with a seven-day on-demand access period. There are also exclusives like post-concert guest artist chats and behind-the-scenes interviews with Orchestra musicians. The latest concert in the series features Nathalie Stutzmann conducting two Tchaikovsky works—the Polonaise from Eugene Onegin and his great Symphony No. 6, aka the “Pathétique.”