Celebrations at the Library of Congress honoring American composer Irving Fine, born December 3, 1914 in Boston, opened on Tuesday of this week and continue through Saturday, December 6. Tuesday’s events included a lecture by Nicholas Alexander Brown of the library’s Music Division entitled “Irving Fine and the American Woodwind Quintet,” and a performance of Fine’s music by the U.S. Marine Band Woodwind Quintet. On Thursday at Washington’s Mary Pickford Theater, the library screened a film of the Boston Symphony Orchestra performing works by Fine and Debussy under Charles Munch. A Friday performance featuring pianist Simone Dinnerstein and the Chiara String Quartet will include Fine’s String Quartet and the world premiere of Jefferson Friedman’s The Heart Wakes Into, commissioned by the Verna and Irving Fine Fund in the Library of Congress. On Friday evening in Coolidge Auditorium, the U.K.’s Choir of Clare College, Cambridge, will perform choral music by Fine, Monteverdi, Britten, Bernstein, and Schoenberg. A Saturday symposium in Coolidge Auditorium, focusing on Fine’s place in the American Neoclassical School, will include a performance by the Chiara String Quartet, pianists Daniel Pesce and Oliver Hagen, and clarinetist Alan R. Kay; the concert pairs Copland’s Sextet for Piano, Clarinet and String Quartet with the world premiere of a two-piano transcription of Fine’s Toccata Concertante.
Posted December 5, 2014
