For press information on concerts at The Frick Collection, please contact bodig@frick.org.
Tickets ($45 each, $40 for members) are available online, by mail, or by telephone at 212.547.0715 (publishable number).
Ticket holders may visit the galleries up to one hour before concerts begin. All sales are final; programs, artists, and dates are subject to change.
This fall, The Frick Collection presents its seventy-eighth season of classical music concerts. Debuting in 1938—just three years after the museum opened to the public—the Frick’s concert series is one of the most celebrated in New York and has delighted tens of thousands of visitors over the years with a wide range of world-class performances by soloists, chamber music groups, and early music ensembles. Throughout its distinguished history, the concert series has been recognized for the special niche it fills in the highly competitive and rich world of music performance in New York. The Frick has been host to major soloists and ensembles including the legendary instrumentalists Gregor Piatigorsky, Artur Schnabel, Joseph Szigeti, and Wanda Landowska; vocalists Kiri Te Kanawa, Peter Pears, Kathleen Battle, Elisabeth Söderström, and Anne Sofie von Otter; and the Budapest, Amadeus, Tokyo, and Guarneri quartets. In recent years, it has become prestigious for European musicians to make their New York debuts at the Frick. Notable examples include Ian Bostridge, Matthias Goerne, Felicity Lott, Wolfgang Holzmair, Gerald Finley, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Pieter Wispelwey, Julian Rachlin, Kate Royal, Yevgeny Sudbin, Charles Owens, Ruby Hughes, Leonard Elschenbroich, the Jacques Thibaud Trio, the Carmina Quartet, the Auryn Quartet, Fretwork, and Nicholas Alstaedt. The Frick has also become an important venue for performers on period instruments, such as Jordi Savall with Hespèrion XX, Richard Egarr, Andrew Manze, and Quatuor Mosaïques.
The 2016–17 series will showcase exceptional musical talent from around the world. Among the highlights are the Brazilian Guitar Quartet, praised by the Washington Post for its “virtuosic gusto,” which will play a unique combination of six-string and eight-string instruments; multiple-prize-winning pianists Joseph Moog from Germany and Javier Perianes from Spain, both making their New York recital debuts; British baritone Christopher Purves, who sang the leading role in George Benjamin’s Written on Skin at Lincoln Center in 2015, making his New York recital debut joined by pianist Simon Lepper; Grammy winner Antoine Tamestit giving a solo viola recital; and acclaimed early music performers Phantasm, a British consort of four viols, and Tempesta di Mare, a mixed ensemble of strings and recorder.
The Frick concert series also has a long history of reaching audiences far beyond those present for its live performances. Since 1939, the concerts have been rebroadcast on the Municipal Broadcasting System, American Public Radio, and WNYC Radio. This July and August, on a series of Monday nights at 10:00 p.m., programs from the 2015–16 season are airing on WQXR/National Public Radio (105.9). These concerts from recent years are available on the station’s Web site, www.wqxr.org/frick, for up to two years. In addition, since 2009, four concerts from each season have been broadcast annually on BBC Radio 3 in the United Kingdom. This year, for the first time, the station’s producers included commentary by the Frick’s Peter J. Sharp Chief Curator, Xavier Salomon, who discusses paintings from the Collection that were created during the period of the featured composers. For complete program information and to purchase tickets, visit www.frick.org/programs/concerts.
2016–17 Season
Sundays at 5:00 p.m.
October 2
Brazilian Guitar Quartet
Falla, Granados, Albéniz, Lobos, Guarnieri, Mignone
October 16
Carducci Quartet
Mendelssohn, Shostakovich, Beethoven
November 20
Atos Trio, piano
Debussy, Chaminade, Fauré, Boulanger
December 4
Joseph Moog, piano (New York debut)
Bach-Busoni, Haydn, Beethoven, Reger, Godowsky
January 22
Phantasm (4 violas da gamba)
Byrd, Tallis, Gibbons, Locke, Purcell, J. S. Bach, Mozart
February 19
Cuarteto Casals
Mozart, Bartók, Brahms
March 5
Tempesta di Mare, recorder, violin, cello, lute
Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Mancini, Castello, Legrenzi, Falconieri
March 26
Christopher Purves, baritone (New York recital debut), with Simon Lepper, piano
Handel, Schubert, Mussorgsky
April 9
Antoine Tamestit, viola
Biber, Ligeti, Bach, Telemann, Reger
April 30
Javier Perianes, piano (New York debut)
Schubert, Ravel, Falla
ABOUT THE FRICK COLLECTION
Henry Clay Frick (1849–1919), the coke and steel industrialist, philanthropist, and art collector, left his New York residence and his remarkable collection of Western paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts to the public “for the purpose of establishing and maintaining a gallery of art, [and] of encouraging and developing the study of fine arts and of advancing the general knowledge of kindred subjects.” Designed and built for Mr. Frick in 1913 and 1914 by Thomas Hastings of Carrère and Hastings, the mansion provides a grand domestic setting reminiscent of the noble houses of Europe for the masterworks from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century that it contains. Of special note are paintings by Bellini, Constable, Corot, Fragonard, Gainsborough, Goya, El Greco, Holbein, Ingres, Manet, Monet, Rembrandt, Renoir, Titian, Turner, Velázquez, Vermeer, Whistler, and other masters. Mr. Frick’s superb examples of French eighteenth-century furniture, Italian Renaissance bronzes, and Limoges enamels bring a special ambiance to the galleries, while the interior garden and the amenities created since the founder’s time in the 1930s contribute to the serenity of the visitor’s experience. The Frick Collection also is renowned for its small, focused exhibitions and for its highly regarded concert series and dynamic education program.
Adjoining The Frick Collection is the Frick Art Reference Library, founded more than ninety years ago by Henry Clay Frick’s daughter, Helen Clay Frick. Housed in a landmarked building at 10 E. 71st Street, the Library is one of the world's leading institutions for research in the fields of art history and collecting. More than a quarter of its specialist book stock is not held by any other library. It includes extensive archives and a photo archive that make it an important resource for provenance research. Its catalog, finding aids, and many full-text documents and images are available online at https://library.frick.org. The Library also supports the Center for the History of Collecting, which organizes symposia and awards fellowships. The Frick Art Reference Library is open to the public free of charge.