From MPR News, Art Hounds are members of the Minnesota arts community who look beyond their own work to highlight what’s exciting in local art. Their recommendations are lightly edited from the audio heard in the player above. 

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Harp takes center stage

Kathy Kienzle is a retired principal harp of the Minnesota Orchestra. She’s looking forward to the upcoming Bakken Ensemble performance where the harp gets to shine. This season Bakken Ensemble celebrates 30 years. The performance is 4 p.m. Sunday, March 1, at Westminster Hall in Minneapolis.

Cheryl Losey Feder is the guest harpist, and Kienzle says this is a wonderful chance to hear her perform chamber music up-close, rather than with the full Minnesota Orchestra.

Kathy is particularly looking forward to hearing André Caplet’s “Conte Fantastique,” which she calls “extremely difficult and very, very fun to hear.”

Kathy says: One of the reasons I really love this piece is people think of the heart as a very beautiful, soothing, pretty instrument. And this piece really looks at the dark side of the harp.

It's based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe called “The Masque of the Red Death,” about a group of nobles who hole up in a castle and throw a masked ball while the populace dies of a plague, only to be killed off by a masked figure dressed as a plague victim.

— Kathy Kienzle

A visionary’s early years on stage

Brianna Regan is a former stage manager and ongoing arts fan in Minneapolis. She has seen both Theatre Elision’s current and previous productions of Grace McLean’s musical “In the Green,” and she liked it even better this time.

The musical is about the early years of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179), a German Benedictine abbess, visionary, and composer whose writings spanned medical, natural history, philosophy, music and more.

The 90-minute musical focuses on a young Hildegard’s early years, when she entered the church after having visions. She is cloistered with an older nun, Jutta.

Brianna describes the show: It's a small, five-person cast that really deals with how to be a woman in the world, how to deal with using your voice, speaking up, being present and how to heal from trauma.

This time around, I really think it is even more relevant in our current political environment, as well as what we are dealing with here in Minnesota; it really hit me and gave me that kind of catharsis.

The artists in the show are just absolutely incredible. I cannot say enough good things about their musical talents. It is a little bit of a weird musical, but I will say, from start to finish, the story pulls you in.

— Brianna Regan

Chamber music in Nisswa

Stephen Gurney of Bemidji is a retired English professor with a self-described “indefatigable love of classical music.” He and his wife plan to make the drive to Nisswa to see the Lakes Area Music Festival perform Mozart and Borodin.

The concert is Sunday at the Lutheran Church of the Cross at 2 p.m. Saturday’s performance at Pillsbury Castle in Minneapolis is sold out. The program contains three pieces of chamber music by Mozart, Dvorak and Borodin.

Stephen offers some background on Borodin’s “String Quartet No. 2 in D Major”:

Stephen says: Borodin was one of the Russian five. These were five Russian composers who endeavored to express Russian folk music and even liturgical music in their in their works.

Borodin was by trade a chemist, and actually contributed a great deal to the advance of organic chemistry, but the Second String Quartet is a pure love song from beginning to end. It was dedicated to his wife. It was written and given to her on one of their anniversaries.

— Stephen Gurney