The Lily Rock Chamber Music Festival returns for its third year on Labor
Day weekend. The festival is a project of the Manhattan Chamber Players,
a group that includes two string players with roots in Idyllwild,
Brendan and Brook Speltz. This year there will be three concerts: Friday
and Saturday at the Idyllwild Arts Academy’s Lowman Concert Hall, and
Sunday at St. Hugh’s Episcopal Church. The concerts are all free,
although a $20 donation is suggested.
The Manhattan Chamber Players will be joined by a number of west coast
guests, including local cellist David Speltz, father of Brendan and
Brook, and Kaila Potts Smith, violist and IAA Music Chair.
The Friday concert will feature a Brahms trio for clarinet cello and
piano, a Dvořák piano quartet, and a contemporary sonata for violin and
piano by Seth Grosshandler. Saturday’s program includes piano quartets
by Mozart and Brahms, Grosshandler’s Suite for Clarinet Quintet and a
cello duet by Friedrich August Kummer. Sunday’s concert will feature a
string quartet and clarinet by Mozart.
Grosshandler studied music before studying law. He worked 35 years as an
attorney, moonlighting as a pianist with chamber ensembles in the New
York and Chicago areas. Since retiring in 2018 he has focused again on
music and has been commissioned for several orchestral works. In his
works classical romantic forms and textures smoothly transition into
modern harmony. A review of the Suite for Clarinet Quintet’s premier
called it “lively, optimistic, harmonically activating a wide spectrum,
and warmly engaging…'
Lily Rock Chamber Music Festival. 6 p.m. Friday, Aug. 3; 6 p.m. Saturday
August 31 at William M. Lowman Concert Hall, Idyllwild Arts Academy,
52500 Temecula Rd.; 6 p.m. Sunday Sept. 1, St Hugh’s Episcopal Church,
25525 Tahquitz Dr.