Liebesfreud: News

Actually 'These' just in... 1050 of them! Liebesfreud's new CD, "Selected Shorts".
Available now in "Applause", the gift shop of Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, and online (click the 'Buy' tab at left). More sales locations to follow...

Today's the day. The music world celebrates the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart! Liebesfreud joins the festivities with two free events. This morning at 9:30 - a live broadcast on WRTI radio (90.1 FM) and this evening at 5:30 with a free one-hour concert in downtown Philadelphia. (please see CALENDAR page for details)

Liebesfreud ushers in Mozart's 250th (for those of you rising fashionably late!) at about 9:30 a.m. Friday. Radio station WRTI (90.1 FM) hosts the quartet, joined by the peerless Principal Clarinet of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Ricardo Morales, in the exuberant Finale of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet. Catch the whole program at 5:30 Friday evening. (See Calendar page) Admission is free.

Liebesfreud's observance of Mozart's 250th birthday just got the perfect ending! (Click on Calendar tab at left.) " 'N Zehn", a vocal ensemble in residence at the University of the Arts, under the direction of Philadelphia's own Jeff Kern, will join Liebesfreud in the exquisite motet, "Ave Verum Corpus". Written in the last few months of Mozart's much-to-brief life, this is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful and perfect pieces in all of music. We sincerely hope you can be with us to hear it on the 27th, but if you can't, make sure to put it on your list of music to hear before departing this good earth.

We're expecting delivery of our first recording, "Selected Shorts", February 2nd. The fine print specified "subject to 5% overrun or underrun".
This means we'll receive 950, 1050 or anything in between.
So... go to "Guestbook" ~ enter: name, e-mail, and in the comment box, the number from 950-1050 you guess will arrive in our first shipment.
(Comments, of course, also welcome!)
Click on "Submit..."
~ 1st Prize ~ Entrant guessing closest to number we receive wins:
~~ a CD and admission for 4 to a Liebesfreud Open Rehearsal
~ Exact match bonus, in honor of Mozart's 250th Birthday (see "Calendar"), the
Everyman's Library - EMI Classics "Music Companions" Mozart book and 3-CD set!
~ 2nd Prize ~ Runner-up wins:
~~ a CD and 2 Open Rehearsal tickets.
Other rules:
~ 1) Anyone may enter, but only once, please
~ 2) Maximum of 101 entrants ~ one per number ~ so browse previous entries
~ 3) If Liebesfreud "family" member wins, other best 2 guesses still win!
~ 4) Come to our concert on January 27th - not required (LOL) but we do hope to see you there ~ see "Calendar" page
~~ Winners posted on February 7, 2006 ~ Good Luck to all! ~~

~ Liebesfreud's first recording, titled "Selected Shorts", is scheduled for release at the end of this month.

Selected Shorts - Neglected Gems for String Quartet

Instrumental chamber music probably took shape as an independent, self-sufficient genre late in the 17th century and composers—a hard-headed bunch, as we all know—seem to have adopted, almost immediately, a very practical policy: if you are going to require two or more people to forego the delights of the tavern and Monday Night Football for the more dubious satisfactions which music-making might provide, then you had better give them something substantial to play.
This usually meant a work of several somewhat contrasted movements—four, most often—and the practice remained remarkably constant, from the Baroque “Church Sonata”, through the evolution/revolution of the sonata style (and the concomitant emergence of the String Quartet as the genre’s fundamental medium), and beyond even the aesthetic upheavals of Romanticism and Modernism. Isolated pieces for string quartet are therefore a bit anomalous and, it would seem, awkward to accommodate in concert programs, so that a certain amount of beautiful and distinguished music tends to get lost in the shuffle—hence, this recording.
Think of it as a shelter for homeless quartet movements.

These works are unattached for reasons that are sometimes obvious—Grieg’s was a student exercise, Mendelssohn died—and sometimes unfathomable (as with Schubert’s piece), but each one either represents its composer’s full powers or offers a glimpse of something unfamiliar in his creative persona—sometimes both.
We should add that this collection is far from exhaustive; stay tuned for Selected Shorts—the sequel!

The works included on the recording can be found by clicking on the "Music" tab on this homepage. Program notes were written with humor and eloquence by Liebesfreud violinist, Geoffrey Michaels.

Liebesfreud institutes series of free concerts on the "Last Friday" of each month, now through June.
These concerts are a gift to the Philadelphia area music lovers from Liebesfreud's musicians and guest artists. January through April concerts take place in the Chambers-Wylie Church across from the Kimmel Center in downtown Philadelphia and begin at 5:30 p.m.*
May program at Philadelphia Ethical Society at 5:30 p.m.
June concert in the Thomas Great Hall of Bryn Mawr College at 10:00 p.m!
Highlights planned for this first season are on
January 27th - Mozart's Clarinet Quintet
February 24th - Mozart's Two Violin & Viola Duos * (begins at 6:00)
March 31st - Haydn's last String Quartet (op. 77 #2)
April 28th - Beethoven's last String Quartet (op. 135)
May 26th - Beethoven's first String Quartet (op. 18 #3)
June 30th - Dvorak's "Bass" Quintet

Liebesfreud announces collaboration with Philadelphia Orchestra Principal Clarinet, Ricardo Morales in Mozart's Quintet for Clarinet and Strings K.581.
An all-Mozart program, on January 27, 2006 - the 250th anniversary of the birth of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, opens with the String Quartet in G major K.387.
The concert, at the Chambers-Wylie Cathedral on South Broad Street in Philadelphia, begins at 5:30 pm.
Admission is free.