ConcertPulse
Chamber Concert
The Swiss composer (and excellent flautist) Philippe Racine wrote his Adagio for string quintet for the 80th birthday of a friend, the cellist Walter Grimmer. In concert, it is meant to be performed before Franz Schubert’s great String Quintet in C major, which Racine has described as the “Himalayas of chamber music” – a wonderful means of providing this Romantic monument with a fitting introduction (a “hillock,” as Racine modestly puts it) and opening up new perspectives by placing it in a contemporary context. In between these two works will be Brahms’ luxuriant String Quartet in A minor, in which the composer amiably refers to Schubert’s Quartet in A minor. Either way, this will be a concert among friends.