Salon Series Recital at the Northern Lights Festival de Febrero – Ajijic, Mexico

Salon Series Recital at the Northern Lights Festival de Febrero – Ajijic, Mexico

Three Paths to Brilliance

This program juxtaposes movements of works written by great composers at the beginning of their careers with ones written when they had fully matured as artists.  Far from showing that the later work is “better” than the earlier one, all the selections on this program show the composer at his absolute best, just in a different stage of his career and personal life.  For Ludwig van Beethoven Beethoven, with his stormy personal life and after the tumultuous, doomed relationships of his youth, in late music (the selection on this program is from his last fully-completed work) there is often a sense of calm, peaceful resignation.  Felix Mendelssohn, however, was as precocious a musician who ever lived, composing with seemingly effortless dexterity at the age of 14, and developing into a fully matured conveyer of deeply personal writing. Antonín Dvořák was set on a path to follow his father’s footsteps and become a butcher in a small Czech town, but at the last minute changed his mind, moved to Prague to play viola in its opera orchestra, and the rest is history.  While his first, self-taught efforts at composition were touch-and-go, Dvořák’s works eventually caught the attention of Johannes Brahms, who put him on the path to being one of the most famous composers in the world during his own lifetime.

Program:

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770 – 1827)

String Quintet in C major, Op. 29 (1801) – Presto
String Quartet in F major, Op. 135 (1826) – Lento assai, cantante e tranquillo

Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904)

Piano Quartet No. 1 in D major, Op. 23 (1875) – Finale: Allegretto scherzando

Felix Mendelssohn (1809 – 1847)

Piano Quartet No. 2 in F minor, Op. 2 (1823) – Finale: Allegro molto vivace
String Quintet No. 2 in Bb major, Op. 87 (1845) – Adagio e lento

Antonín Dvořák (1841 – 1904)
Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 81 (1887) – Finale: Allegro

Manhattan Chamber Players

Molly Carr, Viola
Luke Fleming, Viola
David Fung, Piano
Oded Hadar, Cello
Grace Park, Violin
Michelle Ross, Violin