The Marlbrook Chamber Players Present “Obsessions: Ghosts of the Past” The ensemble will perform at W&L’s Lenfest Center for the Performing Arts on Nov. 5.

By Emily Innes
October 26, 2023

The Lenfest Center for the Performing Arts at Washington and Lee University presents “Obsessions: Ghosts of the Past,” performed by the Marlbrook Chamber Players, on Sunday, Nov. 5 at 3 p.m. in the Wilson Concert Hall.

The performance is free and open to the public and no tickets are required.

The Marlbrook Chamber Players is an all-women ensemble based in southern Virginia, and their performances are highly regarded for their variety, depth and richness of emotion. The ensemble includes Anna Billias on piano, Jaime McArdle on violin, and Julia Goudimova on cello; all three members are also lecturers in the Department of Music at W&L.

With “Obsessions,” the Marlbrook Chamber Players will explore themes of tragedy and macabre through a series of chamber music masterworks, demonstrating the ability of music to express difficult subjects and evoke a range of feelings, from joy to sorrow. The program features Eugène-Auguste Ysaÿe’s passionate second solo sonata for violin, “The Obsession,” as well as a combination of Johann Sebastian Bach’s lighthearted passages and the dramatic “Dires Irae.” The ensemble will also perform Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Ghost Trio,” intended to represent a ghost’s conversation with mourners, and will close with Dmitri Shostakovich’s “Piano Trio No. 2,” a haunting work for violin, cello and piano that mourns the violence committed against Jewish people during the Holocaust.