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One of the better-kept musical secrets in Bucks County is the Concordia Chamber Players, which performs in a number of venues near Doylestown and New Hope that are scenically beautiful but can also require a good GPS to find. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s David Patrick Stearns arrived at a recent concert in Solebury, and this is what he found. 
David Patrick Stearns: Any professional musician should be able to perform Vaughan Williams’ great song cycle On Wenlock Edge just as easily in a coal mine as in the lovely Trinity Episcopal Church of Solebury. But for tenor Nicholas Phan, exploring the music’s melancholy undertones was unquestionably enabled by being in the kind of countryside that inspired the British poems that he sings. Nicholas Phan: Today was easier than normal. One of the first times I did this was at the Marlboro Music Festival, but, you know, it’s the middle of the summer, everybody’s partying and Fall is always the season for me where I think, you know, things slow down, it goes darker earlier. You kind of naturally go to those darker places. DPS: However rural the setting, this is hardly the boondocks. The programs are spiced with modern works by Anton Webern, Daron Hagen and Michael

By David Patrick Stearns, Inquirer Music Critic.  In theory, musicians can inhabit pastoral music just as convincingly in a coal mine as in the late-autumn graciousness of Bucks County. Musical poetry, after all, comes from within. But Sunday’s Vaughan Williams and Elgar program by Concordia Chamber Players (the second in the group’s five-concert season) benefited not only from its setting – Trinity Episcopal Church at a picturesque hilltop crossroad in Solebury – but the sense that the season’s days are numbered. Tenor Nicholas Phan, who has a prestige career in concerts more than in opera, sang Vaughan Williams’ Merciless Beauty and On Wenlock Edge, supported with vibrant synergy from the quintet of Concordia regulars, all conspiring to give extra dimensions to the total effect of the composer’s word settings. Many believe this repertoire wants British performers; the Merciless Beauty texts are attributed to Chaucer and On Wenlock Edge is based on A.E. Housman. But the outsider status of American-born Phan yields objectivity that takes him places British singers don’t think go. His diction is perfect, but not in the well-drilled fashion of, say, Ian Bostridge. The primary intention is communication, not correctness – a great asset in the antiquated Chaucerian

He was one of the great film composers. But before that, he was the toast of Vienna. On Sunday afternoon, the Concordia Chamber Players will offer an opportunity to discover why. Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in Brünn, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1897. He was one of the most amazing composer prodigies who ever lived. He produced works of remarkable maturity from a very early age. The earliest masterpiece to be composed by a former prodigy is generally held to be Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings. Mendelssohn was 16 at the time. By 15, Korngold had already written his first large-scale symphonic works, including a Sinfonietta (really a 45-minute symphony in all but name), which was given its premiere by the Vienna Philharmonic under the direction of Felix Weingartner. Korngold rubbed shoulders, metaphorically, with figures like Gustav Mahler, who declared him a genius, and Richard Strauss, whose first reaction to the boy’s talent was one of “awe and fear.” Puccini praised Korngold’s one-act opera “Violanta,” composed at the age of 16. By the time of his first full-length opera, “Die tote Stadt” (The Dead City) in 1920, the 23 year-old Korngold was the great hope of German-language opera.

Guests at “From Buenos Aires with Love,” were treated to a magical evening at Cradle Valley Farm of live tango inspired music as well as a sumptuous meal featuring food and wines of the region. Special thanks to the wonderful musicians, Nick Danielson, Emilio Solla, J.P. Jofre, and Pablo Aslan as well as the volunteers who cooked and helped to make the evening one we won’t soon forget!   Pablo Aslan’s award winning Quartet with J.P. Jofre on bandoneon, playing jazz tango at  the Annual fundraiser for Concordia Chamber Players, “From Buenos Aires with Love.”   A few more images from the night:  

At the first subscription concert of the year on November 10th, we were truly honored when Roy Chaliff presented a beautiful hand-crafted music stand to Michelle Djokic. He said it was his way of thanking her for these concerts we bring to New Hope. Many thanks to all who came out to support us! Wishing you peace and harmony with the promise of future gatherings in the celebration of music and community.  

Rebecca Clarke’s music will open Sunday’s concert by Concordia Chamber Players, which will take place at Trinity Episcopal Church in Solebury, outside New Hope, Pa. The concert will begin at 3 p.m. Clarke originally studied violin, but switched to viola at the suggestion of her teacher, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford. She enjoyed respectable successful as performer and even as composer. Her Viola Sonata tied for first place with a work of Ernest Bloch in a competition held by patron of the arts Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. That was in 1919. Reflective of the attitudes of the time, there were some who found it hard to believe that the piece could have been written by a woman. It is one of the most assured viola sonatas in the repertoire. However, because her music met so much resistance, and since Clarke herself was reticent about her worth, many of her pieces remain unpublished. Members of Concordia will perform one of her loveliest creations, the “Prelude, Allegro and Pastorale” for viola and clarinet of 1941. Artistic director Michelle Djokic, who is a cellist, remarks that if she could play any other instrument, it would be the clarinet. She speaks with particularly high praise of