MAC offers chamber concerts among tributes

The Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture joins with the Spokane Symphony this weekend to honor the centennial season of the birth of Hans Moldenhauer, with three concerts of chamber music from the Moldenhauer Archives.

The concerts in the museum’s Davenport Gallery will be Saturday at 2 and 7 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Admission is free with museum admission ($7 for adults, $5 for seniors and students with ID).

A Moldenhauer exhibit of photographs and manuscript facsimiles will remain on display at the MAC, 2316 W. First Ave., until April 8.

Saturday afternoon’s concert, titled “Double Exposure,” includes arrangements of orchestral works by Johann Strauss, Alban Berg and Gustav Mahler, arranged for small ensembles by Anton von Webern, Berg and Arnold Schoenberg.

It will feature violinists William Harvey and Esther Olson, violist Nicholas Carper, cellist Helen Byrne, string bass player Chang-Min Lee, pianist Linda Siverts, flutist Bruce Bodden, clarinetist Dan Cotter, percussionist Paul Raymond and baritone Randel Wagner. Eckart Preu, the symphony’s music director, will conduct.

Saturday evening’s concert will focus on Webern’s arrangement of Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony, performed by violinists William Harvey and Jason Bell, cellist John Marshall, clarinetist Chip Phillips and pianist Kendall Feeney.

Afterward, there will be a discussion of the work followed by a second performance allowing listeners to explore the elements from the discussion.

Sunday afternoon’s concert presents unpublished compositions from the Moldenhauer Archives by Johannes Brahms, Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Webern and William H. Bailey, performed by former Spokane Symphony concertmaster Kelley Farris, violists Randy Fisher and Claire Keeble, Byrne, Preu and Feeney.