A chemist [Borodin] and a school teacher [Schubert] walk into a bar... There’s no punch line. Just great music.

Festival Series IV will bring the 2012 Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival to a close in lyrical fashion. Do you think composer Alexander Borodin had any clue what a Tony Award was? I think it’s safe to say he didn’t. Yet his music played a key role in earning that honor for the 1953 musical Kismet. Skip the awards shows, and go straight to the source. This gorgeous quartet will make you want to steal its melodies and make a great deal of money off of them... It’s that good.

Closing out the 2012 Walla Walla Chamber Music Festival is the only piece composed by Schubert that the composer heard performed publicly during his lifetime, the Piano Trio in E Flat, Op. 100. Incidentally, this work figured prominently in Stanley Kubrick’s film Barry Lyndon. It seems that popular culture looks to chamber music when it wants to get down to business... As it should!

Artists: Jennifer Caine, Timothy Christie, Oksana Ezhokina, Icicle Creek Piano Trio, Norbert Lewandowski, Christina McGann, Stephen Miahky, Philip Payton, Maria Sampen, and Sally Singer

A good quartet takes chemistry. Good thing Borodin had a PhD in it.

What does it take to achieve immortality? In the case of Alexander Borodin, it takes the likes of Tony Bennett, Bing Crosby, Isaac Hayes, and Sarah Brightman singing your music in arenas you never intended. Like his opera Prince Igor, Borodin’s String Quartet No. 2 in D provided much fodder for the hit musical Kismet.

WWCMF visits the stunning Spring Valley Vineyards estate to explore the primary source... Accept no substitutes. Hear Borodin as Borodin intended. No Tony Awards. No hit singles. Just plain gorgeous classical chamber music!

Artists: Timothy Christie, Norbert Lewandowski, Philip Payton and Stephen Miahky