by Jarrett Hoffman
The Rocky River Chamber Music Society will explore “Chamber Music of Hungary” to begin its 61st season on Monday, October 14 at 7:30 pm at West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church.
Four Cleveland Orchestra members — violinists Katherine Bormann and Emma Shook, violist Stanley Konopka, and cellist Martha Baldwin — will open the program with Bartók’s String Quartet No. 2.
The second half is all trios: Shook will join another Orchestra colleague, bassist Henry Peyrebrune, and cimbalom player Alexander Fedoriouk in traditional folk music from Hungary and Romania, and in works by Brahms and Vittorio Monti. A freewill offering will be taken.
The largest instrument in the hammered dulcimer family, as Fedoriouk expalined in an interview, the cimbalom is struck with wooden hammers to create sound. One feature that distinguishes the instrument from other dulcimers is its damper pedals, an innovation of József Schunda in the 1870s.