Concert Program III

German Virtuosity

Concert Program III continues the festival’s journey from the Classical period into the nineteenth century. The program offers Beethoven’s final violin sonata as its point of departure into the new era—following a nod to the French virtuoso Pierre Rode, another of Viotti’s disciples and the sonata’s dedicatee. In the generation following Beethoven, Louis Spohr would become a standard-bearer for the German violin tradition, introducing expressive innovations such as those heard in his Double String Quartet that gave Romanticism its musical soul. The program continues with music by Ferdinand David, Spohr’s prize pupil and muse to the German tradition’s most brilliant medium, Felix Mendelssohn, whose Opus 3 Piano Quartet closes the program.