Chamber Music Society offers gala concert at Norton featuring works by Burleigh, Gershwin

The Chamber Music Society of Palm Beach is celebrating its 11th season of music-making with a gala dinner and special concert Thursday that features music by a pioneering African-American composer of classical music.

Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949), born only a year after the end of the Civil War. His grandfather had been enslaved but had successfully purchased his freedom.

A celebrated singer, Burleigh studied with the eminent Czech composer Antonín Dvořák at the National Conservatory in New York, which Dvořák led from 1892 to 1895.

He is best-known today for his hundreds of arrangements of Black spirituals, the music of which he introduced to Dvořák, who later said in a famous magazine article in 1895 that the songs of America’s Black population should be the source of the country’s national music.

Burleigh’s “Southland Sketches,” a work for violin and piano, will be on the program along with pieces by Gershwin, Schumann and the Norwegian violinist and composer Johan Halverson (channeling Handel).

“We chose this program to inspire and uplift our audience,” Artistic Director Arnaud Sussman said in a prepared statement. “We have such a supportive community of chamber music lovers here in South Florida, and this program celebrates them as well as our desire to paint a musical picture that is reflective of the diverse and dynamic society we live in today.”

Joining Sussman, a violinist, on the program are violist Milena Pajaro-van de Stadt, cellist Nicholas Canellakis and pianist Gloria Chien. The four musicians will be heard in the big Piano Quartet in E-flat (Op. 47) of Schumann, a standout work in the genre that has become a staple of chamber music groups.

Canellakis will showcase his cello playing and his arrangement skills when he teams with Chien for a cello-and-piano version of Gershwin’s “Three Preludes,” a set of well-known short works for piano.  Rounding out the music is a performance of the “Sarabande con variazioni” by Halvorsen (1864-1935), who repurposed a movement from a keyboard suite by Handel for a set of virtuoso variations for violin and viola.

Thursday’s concert is set for 7 p.m. at the Norton Museum of Art. Tickets are required for members and non-members, as this is a non-subscription concert. The event also includes a pre-concert reception, a meet-and-greet with the musicians afterward, and a gala dinner (which already is sold out).

For tickets, call the box office at 561-379-6773 or visit cmspb.org.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Burleigh, Gershwin featured on special Chamber Music Society concert