Chamber Music

Nielsen’s Wind Quintet: A Cast of Instrumental Characters

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Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s Wind Quintet, Op. 43 unfolds as a musical conversation among a cast of instrumental characters. Composed in 1922 immediately following the Fifth Symphony, the Quintet is scored for flute, oboe (English horn), clarinet, bassoon, and horn. Nielsen was inspired to write the work after a brief telephone conversation with a fellow musician in which he heard, in the background, members of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet rehearsing Mozart’s Sinfonia …

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Fauré’s Piano Trio in D Minor: A Revelatory Farewell

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The Piano Trio in D minor, Op. 120 is the revelatory penultimate work of Gabriel Fauré. Fauré composed it amid declining health, shortly after his 1920 retirement as director of the Paris Conservatory. Completely deaf and nearly blind, the composer wrote in a poignant letter to his son, “and so one says goodbye, little by little.” The Piano Trio is a musical goodbye. Filled with tender nostalgia and childlike innocence, it inhabits …

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Ligeti’s Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano: Hommage à Brahms

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Hungarian composer György Ligeti (1923-2006) described his Trio for Horn, Violin, and Piano as an Hommage à Brahms.  It was Brahms who, with his own 1865 Horn Trio, pioneered this unique combination of instruments. Brahms was a composer who built on tradition. Composed in 1982, a year before the 150th anniversary celebrations of Brahms’ birth, Ligeti’s Trio similarly embraces a synthesis of old and new. For the composer, it marked a stylistic turning …

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Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Piano in G Major: An Homage to American Jazz

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With its sultry, bluesy second movement, Maurice Ravel’s Sonata No. 2 for Violin and Piano in G Major, M. 77 is an homage to American jazz. It was Ravel’s final chamber work. He completed it in 1927, shortly before the trip to America where he met George Gershwin. By the early 1920s, the jazzy strains of Harlem, New Orleans, and W.C. Handy’s St Louis blues had found their way into Parisian cafés. …

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Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor: “Ist es Wahr?”

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We don’t know any of the details—not even her name, but in 1827, the 18-year-old Felix Mendelssohn seems to have fallen head over heels in love. In June of that year, Mendelssohn was inspired to write the words and music for a love song called Frage, Op. 9, No. 1 (“Question”). The brief song is filled with questions. It begins with tentative, teasing phrases (“Ist es Wahr?”) and concludes with a serene plagal …

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Britten’s “Lachrymae”: Reflections on a Song by John Dowland

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Benjamin Britten said, I couldn’t be alone. I couldn’t work alone. I can only work really because of the tradition that I am conscious of behind me… I feel as close to Dowland as I do to my youngest contemporary. Fragments of the songs of English Renaissance composer John Dowland emerge and dissipate as fleeting ghosts in Britten’s Lachrymae, Op. 48. Subtitled “Reflections on a Song by John Dowland,” the work unfolds …

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Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 73: Night Fantasies

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Robert Schumann composed the dreamy and mercurial Fantasiestücke (“Fantasy Pieces”), Op. 73 in a burst of creativity over the course of two days in February of 1849. Set in A major and A minor, the work was first conceived for the melancholy, nostalgic voice of the clarinet. Later, Schumann indicated that the clarinet part could be performed on violin or cello. The three movements unfold in A-B-A song form and flow together without …

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