About the Music:

This year’s Mansions & Music series explores three notable salonnières of the 19th and 20th centuries. The first concert, presented in October, featured composers among Alma Mahler’s social circle. This concert will feature composers whose works were performed in the Paris salon of Winnaretta Singer.

Singer, who was heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune, was an enthusiastic and generous patron of the arts. Born in America, she lived most of her life in France, marrying Prince Edmond de Polignac — a marriage of convenience. In a Singer salon, one might hear works by Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Fauré, Camille Saint-Saëns, Sergei Prokofiev, and other composers living in Paris. This concert will feature Fauré’s Piano Quartet in C minor, Pavane pour une infante défunte and Alborada del gracioso (from Miroirs) by Ravel, and The Swan and Allegro Appassionata by Saint-Saëns.

Performers:
Aimée Kreston, violin
Alma Fernandez, viola
Andrew Cook, cello
Eduardo Delgado, piano

About the Mansion:

One of Pasadena’s most unique buildings, the Castle Green was built in 1898 as the annex for the famous Hotel Green. The Castle Green is an imposing seven story building that opened in 1899 as a lavish resort for easterners and others escaping winter rigors. Architect Frederick L. Roehrig drew on Moorish, Spanish, Victorian, and other stylistic elements, blending domes, arches, pillars, balconies, and verandas in a building of structural steel with brick walls and concrete floors.