Alexander Kerr, violin

Alexander Kerr

& Musicians of the DSO Alexander Kerr, violin

Chamber Music Series

Tuesday, June 30, 2026 at 7pm Donovan Pavilion

Dallas Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster Alexander Kerr, joined by fellow musicians of the DSO, performs an evening of intimate chamber music at the Donovan Pavilion.

Members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra
Alexander Kerr, violin
Emmanuelle Boisvert, violin
Meredith Kufchak, viola
Theodore Harvey, cello
Gregory Raden, clarinet

DVOŘÁK Terzetto in C major for Two Violins and Viola
PROKOFIEV Sonata in C major for Two Violins
MOZART Quintet in A major for Clarinet and Strings

All artists, programs, and pricing subject to change.

Terzetto in C major for Two Violins and Viola, Op. 74 (1887) ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)

Antonín Dvořák composed
his Terzetto for Two Violins
and Viola in a week and a
day, from January 7-14, 1887.
The circumstances of its genesis were
charming. Lodging in a spare room
of the composer’s home in Prague
was a chemistry student, Josef Kruis,
who also was an enthusiastic amateur
violinist. Kruis and his violinist-friend
Jan Pelikán would often play violin
duets, and Dvořák wrote this piece for
them to use at their at-home sessions,
with himself joining as violist. It turned
out to be too difficult for the students,
so Dvořák penned a different piece
for them. Still, when the Terzetto was
finally premiered, the two violinists
were amateurs, though highly
accomplished ones—a physician and
a judge.

This is a lyrical, sweet-toned
piece, although Dvořák injects
passages of emotional and technical
variety that keep it from becoming
saccharine—a potential hazard in a
piece employing only high strings.
The violins occasionally play in
canon, while the viola typically
adheres to what functions as the
bass line (though in the alto register).
The Larghetto is a graceful study in
Victorian harmony; the Scherzo, rich in
rhythmic surprises, recalls Schubert;
and the finale unrolls as a folk-like (but
not actually folk-derived) tune with ten
short variations, which in turn spotlight
the capacities of each player.

Sonata in C major for Two Violins, Op. 56 (1932) SERGEI PROKOFIEV (1891-1953)

Sergei Prokofiev and his family
left their home in Paris to spend the
late summer and early autumn of 1932
in the idyllic Riviera setting of Sainte
Maxime, and it is there that his Sonata
for Two Violins came into being. In
the so-called “Short Autobiography”
that he penned in 1941, he recalled
the circumstances that gave rise to
this piece: “A society called ‘Triton’
had been formed in Paris for the
performance of new chamber music.
Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, myself,
and others joined it. Listening to bad
music sometimes inspires good ideas:
that’s not the way to do it, one tells
oneself, it should be done this way.
That is how I happened to write my
Sonata for Two Violins. After once
hearing an unsuccessful piece for two
violins without piano accompaniment,
it struck me that in spite of the
apparent limitations of such a
duet one could make it interesting
enough to listen to for ten or fifteen
minutes without tiring.” Following
initial performances in Moscow and
St. Petersburg, the work figured on
Triton’s inaugural concert in Paris.

It’s a somewhat severe work, its
four movements focusing more on
lyrical lines and counterpoint than
on the violinistic effects one might
anticipate. Prokofiev described it to his
friend Nikolai Miaskovsky as being in
“my ‘Lenten vertical style,’ [with] hardly
any double stops or chords.” In truth,
the vigorous second and the dance
like fourth movements do include
some multiple stopping—quadruple
stopping, even—but on the whole
this work is more “about” the simple
interaction and variation of intriguing
melodies by violinists whose parts
have equal weight, all in the interest
of achieving specific moods, as in the
soaring, lark-like interweaving of the
first movement or the muted, dreamy
introspection of the third

Quintet in A major for Clarinet and Strings, K.581 (1789) W O L F G A N G A M A D È M O Z A R T (1756-91)

Perhaps no piece of chamber
music sets as autumnal mood as
Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet—at least
none before Brahms. Nostalgic longing
came naturally to Mozart’s musical
expression, but he rarely vented it
so freely, and at such uninterrupted
length, as he did in this quintet, a major
key work with a minor-key aftertaste. In
fact, Mozart wrote the piece in autumn,
at the end of September 1789. The
times were tumultuous. England was
reeling from the war in America; France
was in turmoil, the Bastille having fallen
little more than two months earlier;
and the rest of Europe was on sharper
political pins and needles than usual.

One of Mozart’s closest friends at
that time was the Austrian clarinetist
Anton Stadler. Though his character
has been questioned—some have
suggested that he took advantage of
the Mozarts’ hospitality, and even that
he stole the composer’s pawn tickets—
Mozart bestowed on him two of his
greatest instrumental masterpieces:
this Clarinet Quintet and the Clarinet
Concerto (K.622). The themes of the
Quintet’s unhurried first movement
tend toward the wistful—or even the
mournful—and the slow harmonic
rhythm holds the vigor of the tempo
marking (Allegro) in check. The clarinet’s
warm sonority goes hand in hand with
the elegiac spirit, the more so since
Mozart spends a great deal of time
emphasizing the instrument’s rich lower
range. Having set the mood with an
Allegro that is hardly an Allegro, Mozart
turns to the profound soulfulness of the
Larghetto in which the clarinet offers a
hushed song supported by the muted
quartet of strings. The Menuet itself is
bittersweet: the strings reign over the
first Trio section, anxiously, in the minor
key; the clarinet joins to restate the
opening minuet (without repeats); and
in the second Trio its upturned phrases
seem only to laugh with a pathetic,
forced smile. Classical-era aesthetics
exerted pressure for a happy ending,
and Mozart complies with a finale in
which six variations are derived from
a foursquare, folk-inflected theme.
All the same, happiness seems to be
something of an interloper; Mozart
allows the viola to inject ominous
appoggiaturas in the minor-key third
variation, and the clarinet and violin
to exchange final nostalgic memories
in the fifth, before closing with polite
assurance that the clouds are sure to
pass

Artist Biographies

Alexander Kerr

Emmanuelle Boisvert

Meredith Kufchak

Theodore Harvey

Gregory Raden

Theodore Harvey, cellist with the Dallas Symphony since September 2008, has performed as a soloist, chamber musician and orchestra member throughout North America, South America and Europe. He has been a soloist with the New World Symphony, the (Bloomington, Ind.) Camerata Orchestra and the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. As Assistant Principal Cellist of the Charlotte Symphony from 2004 to 2008 he frequently performed major orchestral solos and was also active as a chamber musician and as an organist in local churches. In February 2006 Mr. Harvey, with pianist Paul Nitsch, gave the world premiere of his own Sonata in D Minor for Cello and Piano, which was subsequently featured on the Charlotte area’s classical radio station WDAV. He performed the Walton concerto with the New World Youth Symphony Orchestra (of which he had been a member from 1987 to 1996) in Indianapolis in November 2012. In June 2022, with his brother, violinist William Harvey, he performed the Brahms Double in two concerts with the Orquesta Filarmónica de Jalisco in Guadalajara, Mexico, conducted by José Luís Castillo.

Mr. Harvey holds a bachelor’s degree from the Indiana University School of Music, from which he graduated with highest distinction in 2000, having studied with Janos Starker and Helga Winold. Following his senior recital, he received the Indiana University Performer’s Certificate. He completed graduate studies with Joel Krosnick at The Juilliard School in 2002. From 2002 to 2004, Mr. Harvey was a Fellow of the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Florida.

Summer festivals in which Mr. Harvey has participated include Aspen, Sarasota, Schleswig-Holstein, Spoleto USA, Tanglewood, Verbier, Music in the Mountains, Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute (Toronto), International Baroque Institute at Longy and Britt. In May/June 2013 he toured Brazil with the Baroque ensemble Fantasmi, performing in São Paulo and Belém.

In August 2013 he taught cello for a week at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music in Kabul, where his brother William taught violin from 2010 to 2014, and performed a concert there of both Afghan and European music.

In Dallas, Mr. Harvey sang for nine years in the choir of the Church of the Incarnation and twice toured England with the choir, singing at Lichfield and Canterbury cathedrals, Westminster Abbey and St George’s Chapel (Windsor Castle). An avid student of the history of Europe and its royal families, in his spare time he maintains the website www.royaltymonarchy.com. In October 2017, Mr. Harvey was invested as an Honorary Knight of the Royal House of Portugal by HRH the Duke of Braganza.