Tulsa

Chamber Music, Tulsa Style

by Yvonne Hazelton | Mar 24, 2024 10:32 am

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Posted to: Music

Chamber Music Tulsa Friday Gallery Concert: Horszowski Trio
101 Archer
March 15, 2024

When I moved to Tulsa from Paris last year, I knew I’d have to make some sacrifices. But to my pleasant surprise, my life shaped up nicely – I found new friends, affordable housing, art, jazz and folk music galore. 

But I missed chamber music: that restrained, formal, hold-your-breath genre that scares away even symphony lovers and opera fanatics with its strict audience behavior requirements (no clapping between movements) and often challenging repertoire. I love it, though: such a concentrated art form that presents itself bare-bones, no flashy percussion or mascara-ed singers, no smoke and mirrors, just a few vulnerable musicians from the same instrument family, gamely playing some of the hardest music ever written, in a silent setting. Chamber music is my jam.

As I looked for chances to hear this genre of music, Chamber Music Tulsa popped up in my Instagram feed. They offer a variety of ways to hear the artists they bring to town, groups that are usually world-renowned: Friday night gallery concerts with wine (at venues like 101 Archer and LowDown), Saturday nights with dinner at the Tulsa Performing Arts Center’s Westby Pavilion, Sunday afternoons with kids in the TPAC Williams Theatre. Being an empty nester, I avoided Sundays. But Fridays and Saturdays looked good.

I’m a classical music nerd dating a Tulsa guy who’s into football games, fly fishing, and pheasant hunting. But we like each other enough to learn about our respective passions. I started his education off by taking him to an orchestra concert, with a pre-concert mini lecture on sonata form, relevant historical happenings, and how the music corresponded to paintings he already admired. It worked: before long he was shouting out ​“Alexa! Play Schubert!” in the evenings. 

I feared, though, that chamber music would be a different kettle of fish. It’s an acquired taste with a steep learning curve, and I didn’t know if he’d be up for it. Chamber Music Tulsa’s offerings have been the perfect entry point, with wine and dinner to help ease him into it. 

At the January CMT concert, with the Castalian String Quartet, my guy happily sipped his wine and nodded along during the first movements of Beethoven’s Quartet in B‑flat Major, Op. 130, but the taxing, brilliant, grating Grosse Fuge at the end almost drove him to violence. Mission accomplished, I thought. Art is meant to provoke. (“I’m furious,” he whispered.) But then we ate dinner, with three of the four Castalian musicians seated at our table. They were lovely young people and my date gave the second violinist his hat because they both have big heads. The young Welshman was hesitant to accept, but another woman at our table urged him to take it. ​“This is Oklahoma,” she said. ​“We’ll literally give you the hat off our head.”

Last weekend, emboldened by my success, I took him to 101 Archer for CMT’s Friday gallery concert featuring the New York City-based Horszowski Trio. The space is industrial chic, and the acoustics are astonishingly good. Before the concert, we strolled through the gallery, wine and charcuterie in hand, admiring the sports memorabilia and the exhibit of Dutch Wax prints. 

The Horszowski Trio began with Tunes From My Home, a three-movement work by Chinese composer Chen Yi. It is an athletic, grueling piece, and reflects the composer’s formative years, both at home and in the work camp where the government sent her and her siblings during the Cultural Revolution. My date was a little antsy during the Yi, with its persistent, galloping rhythms and plaintive melodies, but he later acknowledged that it set us up nicely for the Smetana Trio in G Minor, Op. 15. A Romantic-era composer, Smetana employs familiar compositional tactics in this trio. His traditional harmonies and rhythms felt grounded and safe after the contemporary feel of Yi’s piece: a perfect counterpoint. 

It was another success for this Friday night series which, with its wine and charcuterie, shorter programs, and cool venues, makes chamber music more accessible than ever, both for classical music nerds and newcomers. Moving from Paris back to the United States did require me to make some sacrifices, but not this time. I’ve found something special here: chamber music, Tulsa style.

Next from Chamber Music Tulsa: Dalí Quartet, April 19 – 21