Antonín Dvořák spent his creative life navigating a set of productive tensions: Czech folk music and the European concert hall, rural Bohemia and the urban sensibilities of a cosmopolitan career, and – most persistently – the Old World he came from and the New World he was asked to interpret. Close Encounters With Music turns that duality into an afternoon’s program, tracing how a composer who “straddled two centuries, two continents, rural and urban sensibilities” arrived at a voice that remains immediately recognizable as no one else’s.
About the Show
The concert is presented by Close Encounters With Music, the Berkshires-based chamber series founded and led by cellist Yehuda Hanani, named by The New York Times as “one of the most polished performers of the post-Starker generation and a consistently expressive artist.” For close to 30 years, Hanani has organized concerts around specific thematic programs and opened each one with introductory commentary explaining “the composer’s circumstances at the time of writing, social and cultural influences that surrounded him.” The Dvořák program applies that framework to a composer whose melodic gift was widely remarked upon even by his contemporaries: Brahms “confessed to envying Dvořák’s melodic gifts,” and the music CEWM examines here traces that gift from its roots in Czech and Slavic folk tradition through the urban influences of a career that moved across continents, from humble origins to international renown. The performance concludes with CEWM’s AFTERGLOW reception, an informal gathering where audience members can meet and speak with the musicians.
Hanani trained under Leonard Rose at Juilliard and with Pablo Casals, and has performed as concerto soloist with the Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, and Israel Philharmonic, and at Carnegie Hall. He also hosts a weekly broadcast and podcast on WAMC-FM. Close Encounters With Music is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit; its Commissioning Project, active since 2001, has produced what the organization describes as “important new works that have already taken their place in the chamber music canon.” April 18 is the fifth of seven concerts in CEWM’s 2026–2027 season at the Mahaiwe.
Venue & Logistics
The concert takes place at the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center, 14 Castle Street, Great Barrington, the established home venue for CEWM’s Berkshires season, serving audiences from across the Hudson Valley region. The performance runs 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday, April 18.
Tickets
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