New England Piano Quartette returns

One of northern New England’s premiere chamber ensembles, the New England Piano Quartette, brings music by Mahler, Mozart and Chausson performs at 8 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2 in the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall. The concert is free and open to the public.

The quartet, which includes pianist and Bates College artist-in-residence Frank Glazer, performs in the annual Florence Pennell Gremley Concert at Bates. The program includes seldom-heard works by Mahler and Chausson, and, in Mozart’s Piano Quartet No. 2, one of the first works written for this combination of instruments.

Glazer is arguably Maine’s best-known pianist, an artist of international stature and, with his wife, Ruth, founder of the Saco River Festival. His colleagues in the quartet are violist Scott Woolweaver, who also belongs to the Ives String Quartet and teaches in the Boston area; violinist Curtis Macomber, an accomplished recording and performing artist on the Juilliard School faculty; and cellist George Sopkin, a founding member of the Fine Arts Quartet and a faculty member at the Kneisel Hall School of Chamber Music, in Blue Hill.

The Bates program begins with Mahler’s Piano Quartet Movement in A Minor, written in 1876, while the composer was still studying in Vienna. Following is the quartet in E-Flat Major (K. 493) by Mozart, the first major composer to complete a piece in this format. Last up is Chausson’s Piano Quartet in A Major, a late work by this French Romantic.

The public is welcome to this concert thanks to the generosity of Florence Pennell Gremley, Bates Class of 1929. The Gremley Endowed Fund supports musicians’ visits to Bates and stipulates that every such visit include at least one concert to which the public is invited.

For more information about the concert, please call 207-786-6135.