Stravinsky at Home: Music for Family, Friends, Lovers

The musicians will reveal surprising new sides to Stravinsky through the years in these intimate concerts. Alexander Katsman will accompany mezzo-soprano Silvie Jensen in Le Faune, a songs composed by Stravinsky during his honeymoon. Jensen will be joined a bit later by Alexander on “Cradle Songs for a Cat.” Susan and Julian Waterfall Pollack will play “Eight Easy Pieces” on one piano. Eric Kritz will take a turn on “Three Solo Pieces for Clarinet,” deeply moving and soulful Russian music. Following a brief intermission, Carolyn Steinbuck and Sam Weiser will play excerpts from Duo Concertante, Stravinsky’s important work for piano and violin. Sarah Cahill and Elizabeth Dorman will team up on Concerto for Two Pianos, considered one of Stravinsky’s major compositions for the instruments. Jensen and Katsman will return for “The Owl and the Pussycat,” Stravinsky’s final completed composition, which he based on a poem by Edward Lear.

2025 Featured Composer: Igor Stravinsky

For 2025, Susan Waterfall’s composer series will feature the innovative and influential Igor Stravinsky. Immerse yourself in his world and his music, and understand how his music evolved over his lifetime with narrated chamber recitals featuring exciting guest artists, and various other settings of Stravinsky’s work across the Festival.

Waterfall’s productions always present exciting, absorbing playing of great music, but are also rare, distinctive examples of what can be called music education, though they’re more conversational, truly a sharing of perspective, interest, anecdote. There’s a sense of immediacy to her delivery, weaving in and out of the playing, an intimately conceived present awareness of this heritage. It’s something unique that needs to be experienced.” -Ken Bullock, Berkeley Daily Planet

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