32nd Season
April 6, 2024
August 5th - 11th, 2024


Saturday, April 6th, 2024
at 7:00 pm


J. S. Bach
Goldberg Variations
for String Trio
BWV 988
arranged by Dmitry Sitkovetsky




Thursday, August 8th, 2024
at 7:00 pm

Open Rehearsal
Chandler Center for the Arts
Admission: Free

Friday, August 9th, 2024
at 7:00 pm

A Special Event - Boyd Meets Girl Duo
Chandler Center for the Arts
Admission: $20.00

Saturday, August 10th, 2024
at 7:30 pm

Majors & Minors
Music for strings and piano by Brahms, Mozart and Dora Pejačević

Chandler Center for the Arts

Sunday August 11th, 2024
at 4:00 pm

An Encore Performance
Majors & Minors
Music for strings and piano by Brahms, Mozart and Dora Pejačević

Afternoon concert in Woodstock, VT
Woodstock Unitarian Universalist Church
Presented by the Pentangle Council on the Arts as part of their summer series.
Admission at the door: Donation





The Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival announces the release of its first highlight CD: Festival Harvest

"The Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival has come a long way since it was founded in 1993 by Peter Sanders, a New York cellist who grew up spending his summers in the Randolph area. An indication of just how far is its excellent New CD, "Festival Harvest," a compilation of live performances of works by Mendelssohn, Schönberg and Frank Bridge at the Chandler Center for the Arts in 2000 and 2004.

When I first heard the album, I had recently heard an excellent performance of Mendelssohn's A Major String Quintet at Vermont's justly revered Marlboro Music Festival. The same work opens this CD, and I actually preferred the Randolph performance. That's big praise."

Read the review from the December 2, 2005 issue of Vermont's Times Argus



Our 32nd Season: April 6 & 7, August 5th - 11th, 2024



Thank you for checking in on the CVCMF. Our 31st season in August was full of wonderful music-making and Jim Lowe's review backs that up! World-class Music in the Heart of Vermont.

We will be switching things up a bit in 2024 and will visit the Chandler Center for the Arts in the spring and the summer! Festival artists will play the String Trio version of the Bach Goldberg Variations on Saturday, April 6th. If you haven't heard this music performed in this trio version, you should make plans now to be there. It will be a special event. On that Sunday, April 7th, we will visit with the Vermont Youth Orchestra in Colchester. We will work with the students and play an abreviated version of the Bach for the kids. We are glad to be able to work with the VYOA again.

The BIG change is that our summer season will be one week, although it will be a very full one! August 5 - 11, 2024. This will include an open rehearsal, a visit with Walter Parker on Vermont Public (to be confirmed), a Special Event with the fabulous guitar and cello duo - Boyd Meets Girl, Saturday night concert in Chandler and another repeat concert on Sunday afternoon in Woodstock presented by Pentangle Arts.

Please plan on joining us and for those that can, bring friends who might not yet have enjoyed the concerts and amazing acoustics of Chandler!

The website has been updated with all the programs and artist information. We are all about Community

Sincerely
Peter Sanders - Artistic Director

Artists and Programs subject to change





CVCMF 2018 - Vaughan Williams Piano Quintet in c - 1st movement



Interview with Peter Sanders

Peter Sanders had the pleasure of chatting with Kate Remington at WSHU in Connecticut a few weeks ago. Two big topics were covered, including his long relationship with the Stamford Symphony Orchestra (now Orchestra Lumos) and also his 30 year history with the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival. Kate was a host at Vermont Public radio for many years and that is how they met. Please enjoy this lively conversation.



Performance Today Broadcast - February 19th, 2020



The festival was thrilled to have the 2017 Ravel Piece en forme de Habanera performance by Peter Sanders and Adrienne Kim featured during the second hour of Performance Today in February of 2020. Thank you to PT for including the festival again! The performance is available to be viewed on YouTube.



Music Review: Sublime Mozart closes Randolph chamber music festival


Photo: Robert Eddy

Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival closed its 31st season at Randolph's Chandler Center for the Arts with a concert that underscores the fact that this has become one of the finest of its type in Vermont.

Founder and Artistic Director Peter Sanders has been bringing his New York instrumentalist friends, largely culled from the New York City Ballet Orchestra, where he is a longtime cellist, for two weeks each year to the town where he and his family spent their summers during his youth. Many of the musicians have established local ties and are, indeed, considered part of the community.

Saturday's major work, Mozart's Horn Quintet in E-flat Major, K. 407, was given a delightfully lyrical performance, and introduced a new musician to the community. French hornist Stewart Rose, who moved from the NYC Ballet to the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, played with a natural articulation and an irresistible warm expressiveness.

In fact, much of the quintet was something of a sublime duet between Rose and violinist Arturo Delmoni and their interaction was exquisite. As part of the unusual instrumentation, they were joined by violists Katarzyna Bryla-Weiss and Michael Roth and Sanders on cello. (Bryla-Weiss has also left the NYC Ballet, but for the San Francisco Symphony, but continues to return to Vermont.)

Aiming directly for the heart was the beloved Molto Adagio from Samuel Barber's String Quartet in B minor, Op. 11 - better known as "Barber's Adagio." Led exquisitely Roth, this time on violin, Delmoni, Bryla-Weiss and Sanders performed with an intimacy usually reserved for long-term string quartets. It was pure pleasure. Saturday's performance of Alexander Glazunov's String Quartet No. 3 in G Major, Op. 26, "Quatuor Slave," by Delmoni, Roth, Bryla-Weiss and Sanders, seemed better than this pleasant work actually warranted. However, the third movement, "All mazurka: allegretto," was irresistible for its ethnic rhythms, and the finale, "Une fête slave: Allegro" was a fantasy of folk tunes and full of fun virtuosity. It may not have been great, but it was fun.

The program opened with stylish and impassioned performances of two of William Grant Still's "Danzas de Panama," "Tamborito" and "Mejorana y Socavon," by the Vermont Youth Orchestra String Quartet. Violinists Emmerson Stapleton and Emma Xia, violist Elizabeth Cunningham and cellist Ariel Tooey all played skillfully and with a sense of ensemble and style. It bodes well for the future of classical music.

The Central Vermont Chamber Music tends to focus on standard composers and repertoire, but it's what these musicians, normally part of an orchestra, want to play - perhaps that's why they play it so well.

Jim Lowe, Times Argus, VT - August 21, 2024
Copyright © 2024, Times Argus





Pulp Fiction performed Jeffrey Zeigler, Peter Sanders, Hannah Holman, Chris Finckel (Arrangement: Bernard Amrani) on August 15, 2015 at Chandler Center for the Arts
as part of the Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival.



Unless otherwise listed, our concerts take place at the Chandler Center for the Arts in Randolph, Vermont. Click here for a map to Chandler Center for the Arts.




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"...Saturday's Central Vermont Chamber Festival concert Chandler Center for the Arts had me babbling by intermission. When Peter Sanders told his listeners from the stage that they don't know how lucky they are, he was dead right. Except that I think they do know how lucky they are. He's lucky, too."

- Peter Goodman, as appeared in the HERALD, Randolph, Vermont, August 27, 2009. (read the full review here)


Rehearsal, season #1 on Chandler stage - 1993 Adela Peña - violin, Aloysia Friedmann - viola, Peter Sanders - cello, Steven Masi - piano

"Stanziano delivered the dramatic washes of notes with clarity and virtuosity, while Delmoni and Sanders plied the dramatic lines with passion. They also responded to the subtle moments with sensitivity, making this a grand - and fun - performance."

"The Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival has become a welcome tradition in Randolph and the central Vermont area, and Saturday's impassioned high level illustrates just why."

"Chamber music festival opens with finesse, spirit. Just when you think you've heard enough chamber music for the summer, someone comes along and performs the Mozart Clarinet Quintet - beautifully, in this case - and the passion returns immediately."

- Jim Lowe: The Times Argus, VT