Chamber Music

Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 14 in A-flat Major: The Cleveland Quartet

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In 1892, Antonin Dvořák left his beloved Bohemian homeland to accept an invitation to serve as director of New York’s National Conservatory of Music. In his words, Dvořák had been brought to the New World to “discover what young Americans had in them, and to help them express it.” During the nearly three year stay, Dvořák traveled as far west as Spillville, Iowa, and composed some of his most famous works, including …

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Remembering Menahem Pressler

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Menahem Pressler, the pianist and founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio, passed away on May 6. He was 99. Born in Magdeburg, Germany, the 14-year-old Pressler hid from Nazi thugs who vandalized the shop owned by his Jewish parents during the Kristallnacht. In 1939, the family fled and emigrated, first to Israel and then to the United States. In 1946, Pressler won first prize at the Debussy International Piano Competition in San …

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Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 3 in F Major: Haunting Ambiguities

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Dmitri Shostakovich composed the String Quartet No. 3 in F Major in 1946 in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The previous year, his controversial Ninth Symphony shocked audiences and upset the Soviet authorities. It had not been the epic, monumental “victory” symphony everyone had been expecting. Instead, it was light, classical, seemingly frivolous music. Taken at face value, the Ninth Symphony delivered bright music filled with joie de vivre. …

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Brahms’ Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major: A Conversation Between Opposites

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Following the completion of his Piano Trio No. 2 in C Major, the often self-critical Johannes Brahms wrote to his publisher, “You have not yet had such a beautiful trio from me and very likely have not published its equal in the last ten years.” By the time Brahms started work on the Trio in 1880, he had become a well-established, mature composer. For two years, he set the score aside to …

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Shostakovich’s Viola Sonata: A Farewell

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The Sonata for Viola and Piano, Op. 147, was Dmitri Shostakovich’s final work. The score was completed on July 5, 1975, a day before the composer entered the hospital where, just over a month later, he would succumb to the effects of terminal heart disease and lung cancer. Shostakovich seems to have considered the Viola Sonata to be a final farewell. All three of its movements conclude with the instruction, morendo, or “dying …

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Fauré’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in D Minor: “The Power of Tranquil Thought”

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Gabriel Fauré’s Cello Sonata No. 1 in D minor, Op. 109 inhabits a world of elegance and dreamy nostalgia. It is music characterized by soft edges, buoyant motion, and an effortless sense of melody. Composed in the summer of 1917, this is one of two cello sonatas Fauré completed in the final decade of his life. During these years, Fauré, who served as the head of the Paris Conservatoire until 1920, continued to compose despite …

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Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 1: A Spring-Like Divertimento

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Dmitri Shostakovich composed fifteen symphonies and fifteen string quartets. The symphonies deliver drama on a grand, public scale. Many, such as Symphony No. 7, “Leningrad,” and Symphony No. 11, “The Year 1905,” have programmatic associations. They are filled with irony, double meaning, and coded messages. They are the music of a composer who lived continuously under mortal threat of displeasing Stalin and his Soviet cultural censors. At times equally haunting, melancholy, and …

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