New site for 2014 Paley Festival

The 17th annual Richmond music festival of pianist Alexander Paley and friends will be presented Sept. 26-28 at a new location, St. Luke Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Paley and his wife and four-hands piano partner, Pei-Wen Chen, will be joined by clarinetist Charles West and cellist Rebecca Zimmerman for the fall festival of piano and chamber music.

The Paley Festival, first staged in 1998 in a book shop, subsequently has been presented in churches. St. Luke, located at the intersection of Chippenham Parkway and Custis Road, between Forest Hill Avenue and Huguenot Road, will be its first venue south of the James.

Paley will open the festival performing the 12 études of Chopin and two suites by the 18th-century French master Jean-Philippe Rameau. The pianist is currently in the process of recording the first full cycle of Rameau’s clavier suites on piano.

In the second program, Paley and Chen will play Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville,” in a rarely heard four-hands piano arrangement. In the finale, Paley, Zimmerman and West will play sonatas and trios of Beethoven and Brahms.

For more information, go to www.paleyfestival.info

The complete 2014 Paley Festival program schedule:

Sept. 26 (7:30 p.m.)
Alexander Paley, piano
Rameau: Suite No. 4 in A minor/major
Rameau: Suite No. 5 in G major/minor
Chopin: 12 études

Sept. 27 (7:30 p.m.)
Alexander Paley & Pei-Wen Chen, piano four-hands
Rossini: “The Barber of Seville”
(arrangement by Arnold Schoenberg)

Sept. 28 (3 p.m.)
Alexander Paley, piano
Charles West, clarinet
Rebecca Zimmerman, cello
Beethoven: Sonata in A major, Op. 69, for cello and piano
Beethoven: Trio in E flat major, Op. 38, for clarinet, cello and piano
Brahms: Sonata in F major, Op. 99, for cello and piano
Brahms: Trio in A minor, Op. 114, for clarinet, cello and piano