Sunday 12/11
Musician and mountaineer Stanislaw Skrowaczewski has scaled the Grand Tetons (13,766 feet) and, no less craggy, the Eighth Symphony of Anton Bruckner. Now the remarkable 88-year-old composer/conductor -- music director of the Minneapolis Symphony/Minnesota Orchestra from 1960 to 1979 and still a resident of Wayzata -- is the subject of an imposing scholarly biography, "Seeking the Infinite," by MIT Prof. Frederick Harris Jr. The 634-page volume was written with the cooperation of its restlessly inquisitive subject; it illuminates not just the man but also his manifold circumstances. This weekend's concert by the Chamber Music Society of Minnesota comprises three works of Skrowaczewski (including "For Krystyna," written for his late wife, to whom the book is dedicated) along with Olivier Messiaen's "Quartet for the End of Time" and a bit of Bach. Skrowaczewski and Harris will be on hand to sign books and answer questions.
