An inspiring, rare moment of collaboration marked the Friday, August 2^nd Overture Concert at [email protected]’s Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton, the occasion’s inviting young, International Program artists to share the stage with seasoned veterans, in the spirit of musical pedagogy and performance-practice. In music by Beethoven, Franck, and Brahms, the participants emanated a thoroughly integrated and often feverishly intense series of performances that point to the active musicians’ futures as much as to their appreciation of past masters, a thoroughly happy meeting of youthful hopes and experienced professionals.                                             

A quartet of diverse, post-Romantic composers comprised the July 26 Concert Program V of [email protected]enlo’s ongoing survey of Incredible Decades, 1890-1900: Moscow to Montmartre, held at The Center for Performing Arts at Menlo-Atherton. Music by Joseph Suk, Claude Debussy, Johannes Brahms, and Sergei Rachmaninov provided masterful vehicles for a literal pageant of accomplished participants while expanding our own horizons on the repertory of this fertile period of imaginative creation.