We’re excited to announce “Women’s Work” – our 2022-2023 concert season featuring music that has long been overlooked simply because it was written by women. Fanny Mendelssohn, Amy Beach, Germaine Tailleferre and Florence Price possessed rare musical talent, but they had to fight for their creative lives. Thanks to their perseverance, a career that was once impossible has become a viable life for women like Missy Mazzoli and Helen Grime.
Diving into the Dvořák and Smetana trios we will be performing in January has been enormous and wonderful. Associating Smetana, the so-called father of Czech music, and Dvořák, who made that music world famous, is natural. Yet, these two pieces are very different.
Smetana’s trio is an elegy to his daughter, Bedriska, who died from scarlet fever at four-and-a-half. The trauma of loss is evident from the very beginning of the piece and colors all three movements.
Dvořák’s F-minor is something else, an ambitious work that may have been a response to the C Major trio written by Dvořák’s mentor, Brahms. It signals a new more mature period in Dvorak’s compositions.
The pieces share an unmistakable Bohemian folk style, but through that shared language say different things. Smetana mourns knowing he has to carry on; Dvořák searches and dances.
Here’s a little Hungarian folk music by Bartok that we recorded this summer. This movement is one of a group of Hungarian folk melodies that we will share in coming posts. (Click on the photo link above to listen to a little Bartok filmed during lockdown.)
Please note that we have changed the Spring Salon program.
Sunday, April 14, 2019 at 4 PM
Program includes performance, discussion and champagne reception.
Moderated by Dr. Derek Katz
Johannes Brahms – Trio in A minor op.114
Just as Brahms declared he was retiring from composing, he heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, “absolutely the best wind-instrument player” he had ever encountered. Inspired by the variety of colors his “dear nightingale” could produce Brahms composed the Op.114 Trio and the Op.115 Quintet almost simultaneously – he called them his “twins”. These were works written with the sounds of particular performers in his ear – Mühlfeld on the clarinet, Robert Haussman on the cello. Thus, each instrument is given wonderful and varied opportunities for limitless expression.
Our Salon takes place in the intimacy and comfort of a beautiful, historic home in Palo Alto. We discuss and demonstrate what fascinates us about a particular piece, taking those who attend deeper into the process. We invite you to experience music in a setting that eliminates the boundaries between artist and listener. Together with our “house guests” we share ideas about musical interpretation and inspiration over champagne and appetizers.
The address will be provided at time of ticket purchase.
Why these three (out of the six published as K.404a)? All of the Preludes were actually composed by Mozart! The fugues are Mozart’s arrangements of fugues by Bach from the Well -Tempered Clavier. As you can see in the audio examples linked to below, Mozart changed the keys for all three works. As a violist himself Mozart understood that simply arranging the original three-voiced fugues in Bach’s keys would not result in the most resonant sound for the ensemble. His choices involve more open strings, making them far friendlier for players and their instruments.
Here are YouTube links to recordings of the original fugues by J.S. Bach which Mozart arranged for violin, viola and cello.
1) Fugue: Performance on piano with a graphic score (in Eb minor – D minor for the trio version):
2) Fugue: also a piano performance with score (In F# minor – G minor for the trio version):
3) Fugue: piano with score (in F# Major, not F as in the string trio):