Mastery

Alexander Alexeyev (1780–1847). Atelier of the Artist Alexei Venetsianov in St. Petersburg, 1827, oil on canvas. Photo cre

Concert Program VI

Mastery

From the nationalist-minded autodidacticism of its beginnings, the modern tradition of Russian classical music bore the unmistakable stamp of its cultural heritage: Glinka and “the Five”—Balakirev, Borodin, Cui, Mussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakov—eschewed Western classicism in order to find their own, distinctly Russian, path. But nearing the turn of the twentieth century, as this tradition developed, a new generation of composers embraced the rigorous technical standards of Brahms and others of their Western counterparts, creating a powerful new repertoire: music as impeccably crafted as the most masterly German scores, yet with its Russian soul blazing more brightly than ever. Concert Program VI celebrates the “Mastery” of Russian music in the generation following Tchaikovsky, juxtaposing music by Prokofiev and Taneyev with the Opus 88 Quintet of Johannes Brahms, whose craftsmanship remains unsurpassed over a century later.

PROGRAM

Johannes Brahms(1833–1897)
String Quintet no. 1 in F Major, op. 88 (1882)
Sergei Prokofiev(1891–1953)
Sonata in D Major for Flute and Piano, op. 94 (1943)
Sergei Ivanovich Taneyev(1856–1915)
Piano Quintet in g minor, op. 30 (1910–1911)
Wednesday 7Aug 2024