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Dan Coren
If you’re looking for an opportunity to hear some of the greatest chamber music masterpieces— works that are much too rarely performed— here are two dates to circle on your calendar in 2007. Any one of these five pieces by themselves would be a treat.
—Monday, January 22: 1807 & Friends, a group founded in 1981 by Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Nancy Bean, will perform two piano quartets: Mozart’s K. 493 in E-flat and the Brahms Opus 60 in C minor at the Academy of Vocal Arts. For a Brahms aficionado, Opus 60 has it all – glorious sensuous melodies plus passionate virtuoso piano writing, all contained within one of the greatest splendors of musical architecture in the classical literature. Click here to hear a tune from the first movement, and here for the climax of the Scherzo played by Artur Rubinstein and the Guarneri Quartet.
At the Academy of Vocal Arts, 1920 Spruce Street.
astro.temple.edu/~rgreene/1807
—Sunday, March 18: An Astral Artistic Services concert will include three piano trios: Beethoven’s Opus 1, No. 3 in C minor, Mozart’s K. 502 in B-flat , and Schubert’s Opus 99 in B-flat.
It’s hard to comprehend what Schubert accomplished in 1828: the C major String Quintet, the songs of Schwanengesang, three enormous, experimental piano sonatas – and (probably) the Opus 99 Trio. Because Schubert died that year, one tends to think of them as “late” Schubert, but he was only 31, about as old as Beethoven had been when he published his first symphony. (The “Unfinished” 8th had already been sitting in Schubert’s desk for six years.)
One of my parents’ treasures as I was growing up was a recording of Opus 99 by Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifitz and Emanuel Feuermann; I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know it. My sentimental attachment to it aside, the trio is one of Schubert’s greatest works, as focused and economical as Schubert’s instrumental works ever are, and effervescent and lyrical from beginning to end. Nobody had ever created chamber music textures like this before; to me, the music sounds closer in spirit to the world of Viennese waltzes, to Brahms, and even to modern jazz combos than it does to the style of Mozart’s K. 502. Follow this link to an excerpt from early in the first movement, and this one to a passage from the second movement. (The performance is by the Beaux Arts Trio.)
At Trinity Center for Urban Life, 2212 Spruce Street.
astralartisticservices.org
—Monday, January 22: 1807 & Friends, a group founded in 1981 by Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Nancy Bean, will perform two piano quartets: Mozart’s K. 493 in E-flat and the Brahms Opus 60 in C minor at the Academy of Vocal Arts. For a Brahms aficionado, Opus 60 has it all – glorious sensuous melodies plus passionate virtuoso piano writing, all contained within one of the greatest splendors of musical architecture in the classical literature. Click here to hear a tune from the first movement, and here for the climax of the Scherzo played by Artur Rubinstein and the Guarneri Quartet.
At the Academy of Vocal Arts, 1920 Spruce Street.
astro.temple.edu/~rgreene/1807
—Sunday, March 18: An Astral Artistic Services concert will include three piano trios: Beethoven’s Opus 1, No. 3 in C minor, Mozart’s K. 502 in B-flat , and Schubert’s Opus 99 in B-flat.
It’s hard to comprehend what Schubert accomplished in 1828: the C major String Quintet, the songs of Schwanengesang, three enormous, experimental piano sonatas – and (probably) the Opus 99 Trio. Because Schubert died that year, one tends to think of them as “late” Schubert, but he was only 31, about as old as Beethoven had been when he published his first symphony. (The “Unfinished” 8th had already been sitting in Schubert’s desk for six years.)
One of my parents’ treasures as I was growing up was a recording of Opus 99 by Artur Rubinstein, Jascha Heifitz and Emanuel Feuermann; I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know it. My sentimental attachment to it aside, the trio is one of Schubert’s greatest works, as focused and economical as Schubert’s instrumental works ever are, and effervescent and lyrical from beginning to end. Nobody had ever created chamber music textures like this before; to me, the music sounds closer in spirit to the world of Viennese waltzes, to Brahms, and even to modern jazz combos than it does to the style of Mozart’s K. 502. Follow this link to an excerpt from early in the first movement, and this one to a passage from the second movement. (The performance is by the Beaux Arts Trio.)
At Trinity Center for Urban Life, 2212 Spruce Street.
astralartisticservices.org
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