Saturday November 10 8:00 PM

Claude Debussy
  Syrinx (1913)
  The Songs of Bilitis for two harps, two flutes, celesta & reciter (1901)
  Sonata for violin & piano (1915)
  Sonata for flute, viola & harp (1915)
  Three Songs of Bilitis for voice & piano (1899)
  Quartet in G minor (1893)

Denali Quartet
Clara Bellar, reciter
Diana Tash, mezzo-soprano
Alyssa Park, violin
Steven Vanhauwaert, piano
Pamela Vliek Martchev & Sherril Kannasto Wood, flutes
Marcia Dickstein & Maria Casale, harps
Victoria Kirsch, celesta & piano
Robert Brophy, viola
Mark Alan Hilt, conductor

No composer had more impact on Messiaen than Debussy. Listen to career-spanning wonders and an obscure Sapphic entertainment from the turn of the century, a setting of supposed ancient lesbian love poems by Bilitis. The exquisite actress Clara Bellar ("translucent simplicity" – Los Angeles Times), seen in films by Eric Rohmer, Paul Schrader and Steven Spielberg, will recite words actually penned by Debussy’s friend poet Pierre Louÿs. Diana Tash ("radiant" – Los Angeles Times) gives three poems the dark colors of her honeyed sound.

Ninety years after the composer's death, the undeniably great Quartet caps a rich program including three of Debussy's last masterpieces, alternately haunting, tender and sun-splashed. The Los Angeles Times describes Denali as, "lively, rhapsodic, technically excellent…riveting…"