CHAMBER CONCERT: Brass Quintet

Chamber concert: Piano quintet

This programme is inspired by a world of romantic feelings: Brahms had been tinkering with the composition of a quintet since 1862 – at a time when he was continually fragile due to failures and said despondently: »When you go on 30 and feel weak like I do, you like to lock yourself up and look at the walls in your sadness«. Nevertheless, he became self-confident, exercised, learned Latin and felt, »I'm growing!« Moreover, the Hamburg-born composer moved to his adopted home of Vienna, where he lived near the Prater and could drink his wine »where Beethoven used to drink it«. In 1864, he finally finished the piano quintet, about which his soulmate Clara Schumann raved: »I feel after the work as if I had read a great tragic story.« The remarkable composition captivates with a plethora of original thoughts that are artfully developed – it is also filled with a profound seriousness in long parts. Elgar‘s moving piano quintet also bears witness to a similar state of mind: it was composed in 1918/19 at a time when his life was overshadowed by worries, illnesses, fears and the loss of loved ones in the wake of the horrors of war. Despite his great fame in London, the highly sensitive composer retreated to the countryside to find a break from the world's noise – to which he soon had nothing more to say in music: he wrote only a few works, such as the piano quintet. Even though it sounds at times belligerently agitated, a gloomy mood and a sheer overwhelming nostalgia spreads again and again as a witness to his broken soul – after all, he noted at the time: »Everything comforting and hopeful in my life is irretrievably over«.

Chamber concert: String quintet

Attention: Change of programme and line-up

Wind Quintet

Chamber Concert

Composed in 1785, Mozart’s K 478 was his first contribution to the piano quartet genre. The emotionality of the opening movement’s minore key and the subtly wrought dialogue between strings and piano proclaim its high artistic standards. No less brilliant is the Piano Quartet composed 100 years later by the young Richard Strauss. In his youthful élan he vacillates between engagement with romantic models (especially Brahms) and harbingers of his own style. The ennoblement of the clarinet as a chamber music instrument takes us back to Mozart. To the present day, many works owe their existence to the challenge of blending its timbre with the strings. The same is true of Veress’s Trio of 1972 and Penderecki’s Quartet of 1993, whose elegiac finale also pays tribute to Schubert’s C major Quintet.

Chamber Concert

Composed in 1785, Mozart’s K 478 was his first contribution to the piano quartet genre. The emotionality of the opening movement’s minore key and the subtly wrought dialogue between strings and piano proclaim its high artistic standards. No less brilliant is the Piano Quartet composed 100 years later by the young Richard Strauss. In his youthful élan he vacillates between engagement with romantic models (especially Brahms) and harbingers of his own style. The ennoblement of the clarinet as a chamber music instrument takes us back to Mozart. To the present day, many works owe their existence to the challenge of blending its timbre with the strings. The same is true of Veress’s Trio of 1972 and Penderecki’s Quartet of 1993, whose elegiac finale also pays tribute to Schubert’s C major Quintet.

Chamber Concert

This evening of Nordic chamber music covers a wide range of styles by composers from four Scandinavian countries. The historical starting point is the Septet for Winds and Strings, written in 1817 by the Swedish romantic composer Franz Berwald. It is unmistakably modelled on Beethoven’s masterpiece for the same combination of instruments. Grieg’s unfinished F major String Quartet of 1891 exudes a lilting charm and a Norwegian hue, while the E flat major Quartet by his Danish colleague Carl Nielsen (1898) strikes out on noticeably more modern paths. Rounding off the programme are two pièces de occasion: an enchanting Serenade with a touch of Vienna, composed by Sibelius during a holiday on Finland’s Archipelago Sea, and a humorous “unrequited” nocturnal serenade by Carl Nielsen, written during a concert tour in 1914.

Chamber Concert

This evening of Nordic chamber music covers a wide range of styles by composers from four Scandinavian countries. The historical starting point is the Septet for Winds and Strings, written in 1817 by the Swedish romantic composer Franz Berwald. It is unmistakably modelled on Beethoven’s masterpiece for the same combination of instruments. Grieg’s unfinished F major String Quartet of 1891 exudes a lilting charm and a Norwegian hue, while the E flat major Quartet by his Danish colleague Carl Nielsen (1898) strikes out on noticeably more modern paths. Rounding off the programme are two pièces de occasion: an enchanting Serenade with a touch of Vienna, composed by Sibelius during a holiday on Finland’s Archipelago Sea, and a humorous “unrequited” nocturnal serenade by Carl Nielsen, written during a concert tour in 1914.

Chamber Concert

“Sorrow always – upward glance – celestial dew – recollection”: thus the words that Anton Webern set in his aphoristically short work for soprano and string quartet. They also stand as a motto for this unusual and cleverly assembled programme. The works in the first section come from completely different eras and interlock like meditations – devout, contemplative, ravishingly beautiful, yet pervaded by a “sweet” tone of sorrow. Schubert’s G major Quartet also directs its gaze into unknown dimensions. Few works of chamber music sustain the combination of sorrow and supplication with such existential force and urgency as this unique visionary creation from the year 1826.

Chamber Concert

“Sorrow always – upward glance – celestial dew – recollection”: thus the words that Anton Webern set in his aphoristically short work for soprano and string quartet. They also stand as a motto for this unusual and cleverly assembled programme. The works in the first section come from completely different eras and interlock like meditations – devout, contemplative, ravishingly beautiful, yet pervaded by a “sweet” tone of sorrow. Schubert’s G major Quartet also directs its gaze into unknown dimensions. Few works of chamber music sustain the combination of sorrow and supplication with such existential force and urgency as this unique visionary creation from the year 1826.

Chamber Concert

A milestone of 20th-century chamber music and a top-notch blend of high and applied art: this programme deftly combines two completely different musical universes. Olivier Messiaen’s 45-minute mystical vision of the “end of time”, inspired by his reading of the Book of Revelation, leads the listener into a realm of the eternal and infinite. This meditation, brought about with ingenious rhythmic devices, contrasts with the first part of the programme under the banner of “lived music”. Here the Jewish-American composer Paul Schoenfield (1947- ) draws on a wide range of musical experiences – jazz, klezmer, ancient Hassidic melodies – combining them with classical stylistic elements and instrumental virtuosity.