Brahms' Clarinet Quintet Pre-Concert Letter

We begin our 43rd season featuring one of the greatest chamber works ever written alongside a rarely heard gem for the same instrumentation that has been ignored for far too long. Brahms’ iconic Clarinet Quintet is the opening work and we are thrilled to introduce ESM’s new Professor of Clarinet, Michael Wayne, to SCMR’s enthusiastic audience. Michael joins the Rochester community after many years with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and we are excited to feature him as an integral part of both our opening and closing concerts during his first year in Rochester.

Hans Gal is a somewhat unfamiliar composer but his works are finally receiving the performances they deserve. He was forced out of his posts in Germany at the start of WWII, due to his Jewish ancestry. Because musical tastes shifted to favoring more avant-garde compositions after the war, his Austro-German sense of tonality was considered old-fashioned. Gal studied composition for two years with a close friend of Brahms and you will hear his love of Brahms, Schubert and Bach in this neglected and beautiful work that was completed in 1977. In between these two quintets we will perform Hugo Wolf’s charming showpiece for string quartet, his Italian Serenade. We are pleased to also introduce one of the newest members of RPO’s first violin section, Willa Finck, to our audience.

Please feel free to join us for a complimentary wine tasting during intermission. The Pre-concert chat is at 3:30pm and the performance begins at 4:00pm.

Warmly,

Erik and Juliana