Shirley Hunt, cello
Sylvia Berry, keyboard
Beethoven @ 252 : The Early Years
Performed on period instruments
Sunday January 23, 2022
5:00 PM
Internationally respected baroque cellist and violist da gamba Shirley Hunt brings fierce imagination and integrity to the music of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Contemporary eras. Praised by The Strad as “stylish and accomplished,” she embraces an eclectic musical life as a multi-instrumental soloist and collaborator.
Ms. Hunt recently released her third CD, J.S. Bach Suites & Sonatas Vol. 3. This recording is the third installment in an ambitious three-part recording project featuring Bach’s complete Cello Suites and Sonatas for Viola da gamba and harpsichord performed on an array of period instruments, including a rare five-string cello from 1720 housed at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and a William Forster II cello from c. 1760 that was played by its former owner in studio sessions with the Beatles. Ms. Hunt's previous recordings have been praised for “soulful renditions,” “high-wire interpretations,” and “a resonant, singing tone that stays in the mind" (Facts & Arts).
In high demand as viola da gamba soloist and continuo cellist for the Passions, Cantatas, and Concertos of J.S. Bach, Ms. Hunt performs and records extensively with the nation's leading period instrument ensembles including Boston Baroque, Handel and Haydn Society, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, The Sebastians, TENET, Les Bostonades, Sonnambula, and RUCKUS. She is a founding member of the Cramer Quartet, a period instrument string quartet performing classical and early romantic repertoire.
Ms. Hunt’s performance of the Bach Cello Suites was recently featured on The Pindrop Sessions, a concert series at the Aeronaut Brewery co-sponsored by WGBH. She has also performed solo recitals at DePaul University, the Boston Public Library, Gore Place Carriage House Concerts, and Ashmont Hill Chamber Music in Dorchester. As a chamber musician, she has performed at the Morgan Library & Museum, the Library of Congress, the Phillips Collection, the Strathmore Mansion, Caramoor, La Jolla Music Society SummerFest, Rockport Music, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In addition to her concert appearances, Ms. Hunt can be heard on the Parma, Centaur, NCA, CORO, and Origin Classical labels. She has served on the faculty of the California Institute of the Arts and the San Francisco Renaissance and Baroque Workshop, and has appeared as an invited guest at MIT, Harvard, and Princeton. She has taught masterclasses at University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, Adelphi University, Cornish College of the Arts, and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In 2018, Ms. Hunt’s recording of the viol music of C.F. Abel was featured in a multimedia installation by the Mexican visual artist Mauricio Cervantes in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Philadelphia native Sylvia Berry has performed extensively at home and abroad as a soloist and chamber musician. Hailed by Early Music America as "a complete master of rhetoric, whether in driving passagework or [in] cantabile adagios,” she is known not only for her exciting performances, but for her engaging commentary about the music and the instruments she plays. Her disc of Haydn's London Sonatas - recorded for Acis on an 1806 Broadwood - garnered critical acclaim. A review in Fanfare enthused, “To say that Berry plays these works with vim, vigor, verve, and vitality, is actually a bit of an understatement.”
Ms. Berry is one of North America's leading exponents of the fortepiano, as well as other historical keyboard instruments, including the harpsichord, virginal, and clavichord. She dedicates herself to the performance practices of the 18th and early 19th centuries, with an avid interest in the sociological phenomena surrounding the music of that period. In addition to her performing activities, Ms. Berry is a respected scholar and has written and lectured widely on these topics.
Starting with the viola at age eleven and the piano at age thirteen, Berry went on to study at the New England Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory, and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague in the Nertherlands. As a student in the field of early music, she was fortunate to study and coach chamber with many luminaries and pioneers, including Malcolm Bilson, Lisa Goode Crawford, David Boe, Wilbert Hazelzet, Elizabeth Wallfisch, and Eric Hoeprich.
Highlights of past performances include appearances on the Fringe Series of the Utrecht Early Music Festival; the Benton Fletcher Collection at Fenton House in London; “Drive Time Live” on WGBH Radio; the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; the Cambridge Society for Early Music; the Connecticut Early Music Festival; the Portland (ME) Early Music Festival. She is also active as a writer, penning numerous sets of CD liner notes (most notably for Bart van Oort's recordings of The Complete Keyboard Works of Mozart released in 2006) as well as articles for magazines and journals such as Early Music America, Keyboard Perspectives (the yearbook of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies) and the Journal of European Piano Teachers Association: Netherlands and Belgium Edition.
Her ensemble The Berry Collective features a rotating cast of some of today’s best performers in the field of Early Music who perform in orchestras such as The Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, Tafelmusik, A Far Cry, Anima Eterna Brugge, and Grand Harmonie. The focus is on music ranging from the time of Schobert (a little-known German composer working in France whose music was very influential to composers such as Mozart and Boccherini) to Schubert, a beloved titan of early romanticism whose music shines forth with new brilliance when performed on historical instruments.