Chamber Concert

Often considered Brahms’s greatest chamber work, the Piano Quintet in F Minor had a complex compositional history. Completed in 1864, it began life two years earlier as a string quintet, which was then transcribed for two pianos. In its final form, it is notable for its musical cohesiveness and a brooding quality that ranges from the tragic to the practically possessed. Join Festival musicians for this special chamber concert in the Pavilion.

For their chamber music concert this year, the Festival’s resident string quartet takes on Brahms’s earnest, yet lovely, String Quartet No. 2. The piece is full of canons, or imitative melodies (a nod to Bach), and Hungarian themes (perhaps a nod to violinist Joseph Joachim, who played the premiere). Following, the Quartet will play Haydn’s Quartet Op. 76 No. 2, another formally serious but lively and gracious work, also with nods to Bach (note the canon in the 3rd movement) and Hungarian flourishes in the finale.

What happens when 16 of the finest horn players in North America get together and try to one-up each other in arrangements of songs ranging from classical to jazz to rock and roll? “It will be the Mother of All Horn Concerts,” says Bill VerMeulen, the Festival’s Principal Horn. Backed by a rhythm section, the masters of horn will deliver a rollicking good time in the Pavilion—don’t miss it!

Orli Shaham will open this concert with Ravel’s gorgeous and instantly recognizable Pavane for a Dead Princess. Following, she’ll join Festival Musicians for Reena Esmail’s Saans. The title means “breath” in Urdu, and Esmail wrote this lovely piece for a friend’s wedding (and later her fiancé played it at her own!). Then back to Ravel for his masterful Trio in A Minor for Violin, Cello, and Piano, a piece whose four movements progress from a dreamy beginning influenced by Basque dances through several sparkling and haunting melodies, to an energetic—even heroic—conclusion.