Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival Presents: Festival Concert V

The Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival, which draws outstanding musicians from North America and abroad every September, celebrates its 26th season with a series of concerts from September 7 to 20, 2025.

The 2025 Charlottesville Chamber Music Festival is full of color from around the world, from classic pieces by Schubert, Rachmaninov, and Brahms, to the rhythms of Latin America, and Stravinsky’s theatrical L’Histoire du soldat, and so much more. Playing music is telling stories, the expression of culture, the sound of a place, sometimes a place left behind. It is memories, the expression of emotions deep inside and ones to be wildly danced and celebrated.

The centerpiece of this program is Igor Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat with its themes of exile and a search for home through the musical expression of a parable of a soldier who trades his violin to the Devil in return for financial fortune. A mélange of French music from the 20th century complements the Stravinsky, with melodic works of many moods by Darius Milhaud and the Boulanger sisters, Nadia and Lili. A haunting Rachmaninov solo piano prelude and a familiar sweet tune by Hollywood’s own Charlie Chaplin round out the program.

Program:

Suite du Voyageur sans bagage, Op. 157b                   Darius Milhaud
Nocturne, arr. for cello and piano                                  Lili Boulanger
Cantique, arr. for cello and piano                                  Nadia Boulanger
Prelude in B minor, Op. 32, No. 10                                 Sergei Rachmaninov
Smile                                                                                  Charlie Chaplin
Le Boeuf sur le toit                                                          Darius Milhaud
L’Histoire du Soldat                                                         Igor Stravinsky

Andrew Armstrong, Raphael Bell, Nina Bernat, Jeroen Berwaerts, I-Jen Fang, Matthew Hunt, Eleni Katz, Dave Nelson, Aylen Pritchin, Timothy Summers