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Concert series returns to Maui with historic churches tour

Prize-winning cellist David Hardy and violinist Catherine Cho (second photo) are two of the featured performers at the Maui Classical Music Festival this week. Concerts are 7 p.m. Friday at the Makawao Union Church; and 7 p.m. Monday at the Keawala‘i Congregational Church in Makena; and 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Wananalua Congregational Church in Hana; with the finale at 7 p.m. May 12 in Makena. Tickets for each concert are $25 for adults and $10 for students. For information and reservations, call 878-2312. Photo courtesy the Maui Classical Music Festival

The annual Maui Classical Music Festival returns to our island on Friday with a series of concerts presented in historic churches in Makawao, Makena and Hana.

Nine leading classical musicians will be featured including Chad Burrow (clarinet), Catherine Cho (violin), Amy I-Lin Cheng (piano), Rohan De Silva (piano), Allison Eldredge (cello), David Hardy (cello) and Todd Phillips (violin). Leading the festival, as they have since 1982, are violist Yizhak Schotten and his wife, pianist Katherine Collier, both University of Michigan faculty members.

Cellist Hardy, who has performed with the National Symphony Orchestra since the early 1980s, has a long association with the annual chamber event since it was known as the Kapalua Music Festival.

“The first time was in 1985,” says the esteemed musician, who met his wife at one of the Maui festivals. “It was the start of a very long and dear friendship with Yizhak and Katherine.”

Among the works Hardy will play on Maui, one of his favorites is Russian composer Anton Arensky’s “Quartet for Violin, Viola, and Two Cellos.”

Catherine Cho; photo courtesy the Maui Classical Music Festival

“It’s an unusual piece, one of the very few that has violin, viola and two cellos,” he explains. “Because of that it has a wonderful deep bass through the entire ensemble, and there are Russian Orthodox Church melodies interspersed through the piece that ties it together. It’s a lot of fun to play.”

Edvard Grieg’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano in A Minor” on Monday is a showcase for the cellist and pianist De Silva.

“I’ve played that piece many times,” he notes. “I recorded it several years ago with a friend, Lambert Orkis. It’s a fabulous piece.”

Friday’s opening concert includes Franz Schubert’s stately “String Trio in B Flat.”

“I’m really looking forward to it,” says De Silva. “It’s one piece I’ve never played.”

Classical pianist Rohan De Silva is one of the featured artists performing at the Maui Classical Music Festival this week. John Beebe photo

A more modern work is featured at the finale concert on May 12, Spanish composer Joaquin Turina’s lyrical “Piano Trio No. 2 in B minor.”

“I’ve played it many times,” says Hardy. “The music is very perfumed and very exotic sounding, very Spanish. He wrote three wonderful piano trios. They’re just marvelous. Audiences like them very much.”

Opening on Friday at the Makawao Union Church, the “From Paris to Vienna” concert program features Franz Schubert’s “String Trio in B Flat, D.581” (Phillips, Schotten, Hardy), Francis Poulenc’s “Sonata for Clarinet and Piano” (Burrow, Cheng), Fritz Kreisler’s “Pieces for Violin and Piano” (Cho, Collier) and Mozart’s “Piano Quartet in G Minor, K.478” (Cho, Schotten, Eldredge, De Silva).

The festival travels to Makena’s Keawala’i Congregational Church on Monday for a “Romantic Treasures” concert. The program includes Max Bruch’s “Pieces for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano” (Burrow, Schotten, Cheng), Grieg’s “Sonata for Cello and Piano in A Minor, Op. 36” (Hardy, De Silva), and Anton Arensky’s “Quartet for Violin, Viola, and Two Cellos, Op. 35 (Phillips, Schotten, Eldredge, Hardy).

The musicians then journey to Hana on Wednesday for a “Community Concert” at the Wananalua Congregational Church. The program features Schubert’s “String Trio in B Flat, D.581” (Phillips, Schotten, Hardy), Bela Bartok’s “Duos for Two Violins” (Cho, Phillips) and Arensky’s “Quartet for Violin, Viola, and Two Cellos, Op. 35” (Phillips, Schotten, Eldredge, Hardy). 

The “Festival Finale” concert on May 12 at the Keawala’i Congregational Church features Turina’s “Piano Trio No. 2 in B minor, Op. 76,” (Cho, Hardy, Collier), Carl Maria von Weber’s “Duo Concertante for Clarinet and Piano, Op. 48” (Burrow, Cheng), and Johannes Brahms’ “Piano Trio in B, Op. 8” (Phillips, Eldredge, De Silva).

The principal cello of the National Symphony Orchestra, Hardy achieved international recognition in 1982 as the top American prize winner at the Seventh International Tchaikovsky Cello Competition in Moscow. He won a special prize for the best performance of the “Suite for Solo Cello” by Victoria Yagling, commissioned for the competition.

“It was the height of the Cold War when I first went there,” he recalls. “Walking down streets you would see huge murals of Brezhnev and other Soviet characters. People were very welcoming. After every round of the competition there would be interviews. Our (National Symphony) music director was Mitislav Rostropovic, and he had been basically kicked out of the country. After the second round they stopped the tape recorder and everybody wanted to know how Rostropovic was. They couldn’t talk about him publicly. He was finally invited back and his citizenship restored.”

Beginning with piano lessons in kindergarten, Hardy gravitated to the cello in second grade. “Both of my parents are musicians so it was natural for the three boys in my family to take up instruments,” he says. “We all had to study the piano and then my dad said I could pick another instrument, and I chose the cello. I heard Jacqueline du Pre on TV playing a concerto and I fell in love with the instrument. With the cello I felt like I had my own voice. I really connected with it.”

A graduate of the Peabody Conservatory of Music, the cellist debuted as a soloist with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at the age of 16. Then as a 21-year-old in 1979, he was awarded a certificate in the Geneva International Cello Competition.

Joining the National Symphony Orchestra as associate principal cello under Rostropovic in 1981, Hardy was appointed principal cello in 1994 by music director Leonard Slatkin.

“Luckily I went to school with a friend who was the assistant conductor at the time and he told me about the opening,” Hardy recalls. “He said, ‘Would you like to play for Rostropovic?’ and I said, ‘sure.’ I practiced my tail off for a couple of weeks and I was very fortunate, I got the job.”

The orchestra regularly participates in events of national and international importance, including performances for state occasions, presidential inaugurations and official holiday celebrations. Among their recordings, “Corigliano: Symphony No. 1,” featuring Hardy’s solo cello performance, won the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Classical Album.

In 2009, Hardy collaborated with pianist Lambert Orkis for a unique recording, “Beethoven: Past and Present.” This “beautifully curated set presents Beethoven’s complete works for piano and cello, not once but twice,” noted the Washington Post.

The duo recorded the same pieces on modern and period instruments — on a new Steinway and with Hardy’s cello strung with metal strings, and then in an approximation of how Beethoven might have heard it, on three different replicas of late 18th- and early 19th-century pianos with Hardy’s cello (the same 1694 Testore) strung with gut strings.

“It was a lot of fun,” says Hardy. “Lambert had a collection of instruments that Beethoven would have used to compose these works. It was fascinating to play it with a fortepiano because the cellist is usually buried, we can’t keep up with the sound level a piano can produce. But with the fortepiano we have to be kind to the piano. It was a nice reversal of roles.”

*****

Reggae musician Mishka will play at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday at Charley’s Restaurant & Saloon in Paia backed by the 1-2-3 Band and joined by special guest DJ Irie Dole.

In 2009 Mishka was named the Best New Artist in the iTunes singer/songwriter category. Among his recordings, “Above the Bones” debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Reggae chart, and his 2013 album, “The Journey,” also topped the Billboard Reggae chart.

“Mishka is at his best when he takes it slow,” praised a Reggaeville review of his latest recording, “Roots Fidelity.” ” ‘Love and Devotion’ is a prime example of the beauty he is able to create with the simplest means.”

Mishka reports “Roots Fidelity” was “inspired by my passion for roots reggae music, and by a request from many of my fans to make a genre-specific, straight-up roots-reggae album.”

* Cost is $15 in advance, and $20 at the door. Tickets are available at www.CharleysMaui.com. For more information, call 579-8085.

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