School Spotlight: Breck Chamber Players

Today's audio features the Breck Chamber Players of Breck School in Golden Valley, Minn., led by Claudette Laureano at their 2014 Winter Concert.

• 7:15 a.m. — Tomaso Albinoni: Adagio for Strings

• violin solo: Dylan Motto, organ: Kraig Windshitl

1. 7:15 p.m. — Paul Hindemith: Eight Pieces for String Orchestra

Conductor Claudette Laureano can sum up her view of this ensemble in a sentence: "The Breck Chamber Players is a uniquely gifted group of high school string players who love classical music and enjoy sharing their talents with the greater Breck community."

This ensemble began 31 years ago in 1982 with just two students, but since then has had anywhere from 12 to 21 students participating every year. Rehearsing four times a week, the Breck Chamber Players perform curricular concerts, chapels and special events. In the past couple years, they have performed many recognizable great chamber works including Schubert's Mass in G Major, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and Copland's Hoe-Down from Rodeo.

The Breck Chamber Players have been lucky enough to be privy to several special opportunities. Minnesota Orchestra principal trumpet, Manny Laureano, (also Claudette Laureano's husband and her co-artistic director of Minnesota Youth Symphonies) has worked with the ensemble both as a soloist and guest conductor on many occasions (he is also playing trumpet on the Hallelujah Chorus audio). In 2008, local composer Shelley Hanson was commissioned to write a piece for the ensemble: Elegy for Albinoni was premiered by the Breck Chamber Players in Fall 2008, and subsequently arranged for symphony orchestra and performed by the Minnesota Youth Symphonies Repertory Orchestra (also conducted by Ms. Laureano) the following spring. It has since been arranged again for wind ensemble, published by Boosey and Hawkes, and is now performed throughout the U.S.

As well as programming well-loved favorites like Messiah and Hoe-down, Ms. Laureano choses music that will expose her students to something new and give them a different kind of challenge. Eight Pieces for String Orchestra by Paul Hindemith is one such composition. Each short movement is differentiated by a tempo or character description in German, with most of the movements having schnell ("fast") in the title. Some examples are: Mäßig schnell (moderately fast), Lustig, Mäßig schnell (funny, moderately fast), lebhaft or munter (lively). To help her students better understand the musicality of the piece — phrasing, and character, for instance — Ms. Laureano had them write stories and poems about each movement. This interesting exercise generated some very creative results; here are a couple of examples — click the audio links at the right and see if you can hear what these students imagined.

For the first movement Mäßig schnell Julia wrote:

When I hear this movement, I picture a boat stuck in the middle of an ocean. There is a huge sea storm, which is causing the boat to be battered by the wind and rain. In my mind, you aren't sure if the boat and the people on it will make it out of the storm, but as the movement ends, there is a glimmer of hope that everything will turn out ok.

For the fourth movement Lustig. Mäßig schnell, Eva wrote:

The fourth movement of Hindemith depicts balloons swaying in the breeze. The happy, lighthearted mood can be shown through the harmonics played by the first violins. The balloons are outside, possibly marking a child's birthday party. As the movement goes on however, a crescendo and harsh accents mark the arrival of a storm. Once the storm has cleared the balloons are no longer marking the location of the party, but drifting away into the distance.

For the sixth movement Mäßig schnell, Sofie wrote:

"ghost playground"

merrily we sit in circles, spinning, but

the silence is louder and with a pulse the spinning

slows to watch the

spirits of dead flowers whisper up, transfixed.

slowly they float back down until we're suffocated

and a crowd pulses in anxious laze

crawling back to the round and round of

bewilderment

but with the silence now we desperately clamber up

and languidly, we teeter from side to side

out of balance until we plunge, hearts racing faster

until the explode

but our chests still rise in a thump

thump

thump

Genevieve Weiler, a student in the Breck Chamber Players and a sophomore at Breck School wrote an essay about her experience in the Breck string program; you can read it here.

The Breck Chamber Players are next performing on April 29th at 7:00 p.m. in the Chapel of the Holy Spirit at Breck School, 123 Ottawa Avenue North in Golden Valley. The concert is open to the public and admission is free.

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