Intimate Voices chamber music in an intimate setting
A Note from the Music Director, October 2025
See also the August 2025 Announcement of Our Final Season
We are delighted to announce the program for our final Intimate Voices concert on November 22. We will open with Haydn’s string quartet in C Major, Op. 20 No 2, followed by Schulhoff’s Quartet #1, and after intermission we will play Beethoven’s last complete composition, his string quartet in F Major, Op. 135.
How could we decide what to play for this final concert after playing together in this lovely venue for our wonderful audiences since November 2009? We turned to what has guided our programming over the years: we would present masterpieces of the past along with great, less well-known works by both past and current composers, with a special interest in recent years in presenting music by composers who perished or suffered greatly in the Holocaust. In addition, we knew we could not pass up an opportunity to once again play one of Haydn’s 68 string quartets, any one of which would be a total delight for all four of us!
But which masterpieces? So many choices! We could revisit a great work we had played in past seasons: a lush, tuneful Dvorak? an elegant yet passionate Mendelsohn? But we realized we had never programmed any of Beethoven’s "late quartets", and suddenly we knew that Beethoven’s Op. 135, his last quartet, would be the one for this occasion. Beethoven titled the final movement Der schwer gefaßte Entschluß, “The resolution reached with difficulty”. And under the title, he wrote the two themes of the final movement: “Must it be?” answered by “It must be! It must be!”
Scholars have debated the meaning of this unusual feature, with interpretations ranging from the literal comical origins of these words (an incident which led Beethoven to write a funny 4-part canon for male voices on this phrase earlier the same year) to theories connecting it to Beethoven’s spiritual state at this difficult time in his life. But in any case, the wonderful affirmative music of this quartet truly expresses the range of emotions we feel as we came to our difficult decision to close this concert series.
With the Beethoven in place, we turned our thoughts to the rest of the program. Ending the program with Beethoven’s final complete work, which culminated years of composing in the quartet medium, made us think - in contrast - of Haydn’s early pioneering compositions. And his quartet Op. 20 No 2, one of the earliest of his 68 quartets, stood out as a work in which Haydn clearly played around with earlier Baroque compositional techniques, delighting us with his transformations, sometimes moving, sometimes humorous, and pointing the way to a new language for string quartets.
And finally, we thought of Schulhoff’s Quartet #1, written in 1924. Schulhoff was an indefatigable experimenter, composing in every style that was circulating in the heady music world of the 1920s, and each movement of this remarkable work reflects a totally different approach. The quartet was introduced to New York audiences in 1928 by the ground-breaking New York-based Flonzaley String Quartet. They included the quartet in the final concert of their final regular season in Town Hall, sandwiched between quartets by Beethoven and Brahms. But Schulhoff was a Czech Jew and a Socialist, and having been arrested by the Nazis, he died in a labor camp in 1942, and his music was forgotten until recent years. We are eager to share this quartet almost a century after the Flonzaley Quartet programmed its premiere in their final New York season.
We hope you will join us on November 22 and help us celebrate our 16 years of music-making at CSAIR.
A Note from the Music Director, August 2025
It is with mixed feelings that we announce that 2025-26 will be the final season of Intimate Voices. It has been a wonderful 16 years, since our first concert in November of 2009, through expansion of our community outreach events, into our tenth season celebration, then the Covid years of Zoom programming, and back again with a full portfolio of concerts and community outreach. But now the time has come.
We will close our concert series programming with one final concert on Saturday evening, November 22, and I am delighted that both Renée Jolles (violin) and James Wilson (cello) will be able to join me for this special evening. Renée and Jim have played virtually every Intimate Voices concert since 2009, as well as so many outreach events! We will be joined by our friend, violist Ramón Carrero-Martínez, who has been an active Intimate Voices participant over the past several years, and we all look forward to celebrating together with you on November 22.
For this special occasion we have set our ticket price at $18 for all. Online ticket sales are now open (here) and tickets can also be purchased at the door by cash or check. Admission will include - as always! - wine, coffee and tea, light refreshments, and a reception with the musicians.
And we are planning a full portfolio of community outreach events this final season. Stay tuned for the date of our free sensory/autism-friendly Family Program!
We are very grateful to all our supporters over the years: individuals, neighborhood businesses, the Allen Hospital of NewYork-Presbyterian, and of course our host and presenter, CSAIR. This season we ask that any donations you wish to make be directed to CSAIR in acknowledgment of all they have done to make this series possible and to help them in their many community-building efforts. Donate here. Or add your donation on the ticket order page, here.
We look forward to celebrating with you!
Violinist Sheila Reinhold is the founder and Music Director of Intimate Voices, now in its seventeenth and final season. She gave her first performance as soloist with orchestra at the age of nine in the Kaufmann Concert Hall of the 92nd Street Y in her native New York City. At the age of fourteen, she was invited by Jascha Heifetz to join his master class at the University of Southern California, where she studied with him for five years. She received her B.Mus. from USC and studied theory and analysis with composers Leon Kirchner and Earl Kim at Harvard University.
Ms. Reinhold's concert engagements have included solo appearances with conductors such as Zubin Mehta and André Kostelanetz, chamber music with Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky, and performances both as soloist and as chamber musician at festivals such as Chautauqua, Ives, and Mohawk Trail. She has premiered many solo and chamber works for both violin and viola and can be heard as a chamber musician on the North/South and Albany labels, most recently on a CD of the music of Allen Shawn. Her varied career has also included work on major films and Broadway productions, and appearances in concert and on recordings with popular artists such as the late Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin.
Ms. Reinhold has had a life-long dedication to teaching, with positions including Resident Musician at Harvard and head of the string faculty at the Children's Orchestra Society in New York, in addition to maintaining her home studio. She has also been an adjudicator, guest teacher and chamber music coach at, among others, the Juilliard School, Mannes College, Manhattan School of Music, Eastman School of Music, and Columbia University. She has been a faculty member of the Chamber Music Conference and Composer's Forum of the East each summer since 2000.
Sheila Reinhold recently moved her home base to Denver, where she has taught courses for adult music-lovers through the University of Denver and curated an annual Holocaust Remembrance concert, among other activities, while maintaining her commitment to Intimate Voices in New York and engagements elsewhere.
