-Debussy: Premiere Rhapsodie
-Debussy: String Quartet in G minor, Op. 10

Compared to classical era composers like Haydn and Mozart, Debussy’s chamber music output was rather small: not counting solo piano or vocal works, he wrote only about a dozen chamber music pieces. His string quartet is nonetheless considered among his top compositions, and one of the important impressionist era chamber pieces. The music is classic Debussy in its search for unique colors and sonorities. Before the quartet, we’ll hear one of Debussy’s shorter chamber works. The rhapsodie is the more substantial of two works he composed for clarinet in 1910, written for the conservatory as a tool for evaluating their clarinet students. The previous year, Debussy had apparently been taken with the quality of the woodwind players.

Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

- Beethoven: String Trio in G Major, Op. 9, No. 1
- Ives: Piano Trio

Today we focus on significant trios, from the old and new worlds. A relatively early trio, Beethoven’s String Trio in G Major, may have been an experiment with some of the ideas he would later bring to the symphonic realm. Beethoven plays with form in the movements, surprising listeners with stop-and-start repeats in the scherzo and vividly contrasting themes in the final movement. Charles Ives’ Piano Trio, completed in 1911, went unperformed for years, finally unearthed in 1948 by a music faculty trio in Ohio. In typical Ives fashion, snippets of a number of folk and popular songs interject, particularly in the scherzo. Listen for, among others, "My Old Kentucky Home," "Sailor's Hornpipe," "and "Long, Long Ago

Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

- Haydn: Folk Songs for Voice with Violin, Cello and Piano
- Haydn: String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 64, No. 6

It’s easy to forget that chamber music is so called because it was written for performance in one’s own chamber, not the concert hall. The advent of recording and the internet has made it possible for you to listen to this live performance in your car, on the treadmill, or in your living room. In Haydn’s day, though, all music was live. Gathering a few friends to play together in your home was one of the most common ways to experience music. First we’ll hear three folk songs arranged by Haydn for a chamber ensemble of violin, cello, piano, and voice, the sort of instrumentation one could easily imagine gathering together among friends. Then, we’ll hear Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat Major. Written later in Haydn’s career, these quartets were likely composed for one of the violinists in Haydn’s court orchestra, but they were also intended for public performance in London. Thus they draw on the genre’s history as at-home entertainment but also anticipate chamber music’s future as a concert form.

Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

- Mozart: String Quartet in F Major, K 590
- Mozart: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, K 478

Written in 1790, Mozart’s String Quartet in F Major was Mozart’s final string quartet, part of an incomplete set written for the King of Prussia, an enthusiastic cellist. The quartets were written to show off the King’s cello-playing prowess, and this one is a charming work, sprightly and full of delightful contrasts. Next is Mozart’s first piano quartet, in G minor, which was commissioned as part of a set by the publisher Franz Anton Hoffmeister. Once Hoffmeister saw this first piano quartet, however, he cancelled the remaining commissions, realizing that the music was far beyond the abilities of most amateur musicians, for whom the publication was intended. At the time, Mozart was giving regular performances of his own piano concertos, and the quartet seems almost like a mini-concerto at times, with virtuosic piano writing. The sections in which all four players are on more equal footing, with intricate contrapuntal writing, were equally daunting to amateur players. Though the work may not have been a commercial success, it has become a well-loved gem in the somewhat limited piano quartet literature.

Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

- Beethoven: Violin Sonata in D Major, Op. 12, No. 1
- Beethoven: Piano Sonata No. 28 in A Major, Op 101

When one thinks of Beethoven, the image that springs to mind is usually of the stern, wild-haired man behind such epic works as the fifth and ninth symphonies, or perhaps the avant gardist who wrote those sublimely philosophical final string quartets. But of course, there’s more to Beethoven than that. As Lewis Lockwood and Mark Kroll write in their book on Beethoven’s violin sonatas, “Although this image is meaningful and enduring, it fails to make room for contrasting dimensions of Beethoven’s art that belong to other aesthetic domains—those of grace, beauty, humor, and restraint, which emerge…in the more intimate world of his keyboard chamber music.” In today’s podcast, we’ll delve into that world, first through Beethoven’s first violin sonata in D Major. Written early in Beethoven’s career, and characterized by those qualities of beauty and lightness, the sonata nonetheless contains kernels of the methods that would characterize his later work. Then, we’ll hear Beethoven’s 28th piano sonata, his opus 101. In the final movement of this sonata, Beethoven again employs a device that would become a signature in his later works: a wonderfully intricate fugue.

Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston.

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.