Music@Menlo | Concert Programs

Concert Program I: 1710–1720, Bach Ascending

At the hands of Corelli, Vivaldi, Handel, and others, the music of the Baroque era reached new heights of complexity and expressive depth. But by the early eighteenth century, one supreme artist had emerged ...

Concert Program II: 1790–1800, Beethoven Launched

Mozart’s death in 1791 marked an abrupt end to one of history’s most incandescent artistic careers. The following year, the twenty-two-year-old Beethoven traveled to Vienna, where, under Haydn’s tutelage, he inherited—and then transformed—the Classical ...

Concert Program III: 1820–1830, Classical Twilight

In their final years, Beethoven and Schubert produced works of unparalleled importance to Western music history. Beethoven’s late works demonstrated such far-reaching vision that the composer himself conceded to his contemporaries, “They are not ...

Concert Program IV: 1840–1850, Romantic Revolution

By the mid-nineteenth century, the Romantic age had reached its apex. The turbulence of the 1840s, from the conquest of the American West to the European revolutions of 1848, is vividly reflected in the ...

Concert Program V: 1890–1900, Moscow to Montmartre

As the twentieth century approached, German and Austrian dominance of Western music began to fade, giving way to a galaxy of voices from France, Russia, Bohemia, and beyond. The late music of Brahms, emblematic ...

Concert Program VI: 1920–1930, The Roaring Twenties

In 1921, Russian influence expanded in the east, the Miss America pageant was born, and, for the first time, baseball was heard on the radio. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s immortal documentation of ...

Concert Program VII: 1990–2000, Music at the Millennium

A brilliant mosaic of musical voices illuminated the twentieth century’s final decade. Composers had a myriad of influences in their ears, from the world’s folk traditions to rock and roll. While such luminaries as ...