About
The Cincinnati Chamber Music Society was formed in 1929, making it the fifth such society in the country, after Coleman Chamber Music Association of Pasadena (1904), The Buffalo Chamber Music Society (1924), The Library of Congress (1925), and Chamber Music Society of Detroit (1927).
Rumor has it that the founders wanted to give paying employment to musicians put out of work in the Depression. The Society consisted of a group of friends or acquaintances that enjoyed performing and listening to chamber music in their homes. Cincinnati with its German heritage is no stranger to chamber music. In the 19th century amateur musicians invited friends over to make a little Hausmusik with them. Those who did not play themselves invited musicians in to perform string quartets in their homes for assembled groups of music-loving guests. House concerts for invited guests continue in Cincinnati today.
But this city has long enjoyed chamber music from outside the local scene too. In the late twenties a group of enthusiasts with Cincinnati German names like Esselborn, Wurlitzer, Geier, Kuhn, Freiberg, Berne, and Dumler got together to establish a Cincinnati Chamber Music Society for the purpose of offering a regular paid public subscription series featuring the best chamber ensembles available around the world. In order to retain the proper atmosphere they decided at first to have these special concerts take place in various Cincinnati homes. It was all very elegant and rather snooty. Subscribers came to the Wurlitzers’ or the Esselborns’ house on Sunday evening in black tie and dinner dresses. After the concert tea and coffee were served with sandwiches and cakes while the audience mingled with the performers.
When the list of subscribers grew too large for private homes to accommodate, the concerts were moved in succession to the Town Club, to parlors in the Hotel Sinton and the Gibson Hotel (both demolished today), and finally to the drawing room of the Taft Museum (very much alive), an ideal setting for chamber music where they remained for many years.
By that time the evening clothes were gone, and the tea and cakes after the concert were replaced by punch poured by ladies during the intermission. In the mid sixties the series outgrew the Taft and moved to the auditorium of the Cincinnati Art Museum. In 1972 the Society moved to the College-Conservatory of Music, first to Patricia Corbett Theater and then to the Robert J. Werner Recital Hall, where the concerts are given today in a professional and beautiful atmosphere. No more tea, cakes, or punch. It is sad for many to see the old gracious ways disappear, but chamber music too lives in the modern world, and what is lost in intimacy has been gained in excellent acoustics and comfortable seating.
The Cincinnati Chamber Music Society is the only musical organization in the city regularly presenting internationally-known chamber groups. There is hardly a well-known ensemble that has not appeared on their series over the years: the Coolidge, the Kolisch, the Budapest, the Amadeus, the Hungarian, the Juilliard, and the Guarneri Quartets; the Beaux Arts Trio; and I Solisti Veneti are a few among them. The Society was one of the first to introduce to the public the Cleveland Quartet, the Tokyo, the Alban Berg, and the Emerson String Quartet, all of whom have gone on to make important reputations.
