2021 Festival

Concert Program VI

This summer’s sixth concert program offers two of the chamber music literature’s most emotionally powerful statements. Brahms composed his Piano Quartet no. 3 in C minor, op. 60, in the throes of romantic despair. “You may place a picture on the title page, namely a head – with a pistol in front of it,” he wrote to his publisher. “This will give you some idea of the music.” A similar pathos permeates Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet, completed in 1940 and critically hailed as “a portrait of our age – the rich-toned, perfect voice of the present.”

All concert programs are performed at 4:00 p.m. in the Spieker Center for the Arts, Menlo School, and at 6:00 p.m. outdoors in the Middle School Courtyard of Menlo School. You can also watch via livestream – log in to your account on Music@Menlo’s website to watch here.