Chamber Concert

Programme

Sándor Veress
Introduzione e Coda for Violin, Clarinet and Cello

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Piano Quartet in G Minor, KV 478

Interval

Krzysztof Penderecki
Clarinet Quartet

Richard Strauss
Piano Quartet in C Minor, op. 13

Christopher Corbett, Clarinet

Tobias Steymans, Violin

Giovanni Menna, Viola

Giorgi Kharadze, Cello

Victoria Schwartzman, Piano

About the Programme

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.