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Dear Friends,

A warm welcome to you for our second year of Magisterra, the Iowa International Chamber Music Festival. Your support and enthusiasm last year made the festival a huge success and encouraged us to plan this summer of chamber music.

Magisterra brings together mostly European guest musicians and UI faculty for twelve exhilarating days of rehearsals and concerts (seven recitals and two lectures) and takes artists and audience on a journey from Bach to Brahms to Henze to Gubaidulina.

Last year we experimented with the Marathon of music by Alfred Schnittke, which turned out to be so successful that I’m emboldened to present this year an equally adventurous voyage through music of the twentieth century from both sides of the Atlantic. We’ll survey music written after 1940 in Europe and the U.S. The Marathon includes the world premiere of one of the Four Bagatelles written for me by Polish composer Piotr Radko and David Gompper’s American premiere of Butterfly Dance, which received its premiere in Moscow last month.

As usual in my programming, you will find well-known works and composers juxtaposed with lesser-known compositions and composers. I hope that you enjoy these programs as much as all of us on stage enjoy exploring these masterworks together. This is music fueled by spontaneity and imagination, played in concerts where cultural borders are removed and language becomes superfluous.

The University of Iowa and its Division of Performing Arts have been the festival’s sponsors and it would be impossible to envision Magisterra without the generous support of Linda Maxson, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; David Nelson, director of the Division of Performing Arts; and Kristin Thelander, director of the School of Music. This year’s festival also owes its existence and success to the commitment of dozens of volunteers and music lovers within the community. A sincere thank you goes to Judy Hurtig who, as the festival’s managing director, did the real work behind the scenes. For the festival, I will be playing on a 1669 Stradivari “Elisbee” violin, on loan from Machold Rare Violins, New York. Last, but certainly not least, I would like to thank our first corporate sponsor, the Iowa City Press-Citizen, which has generously made a long-term commitment to the festival.

Please let your curiosity lead you on a journey through wonderful music, some of which is familiar, but much of which is new.

Annette-Barbara Vogel
Artistic Director

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