- Brahms: Two Rhapsodies, Op. 79
- Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 10

With lush harmony and passionate, singing melody, the Brahms’ Rhapsodies are textbook examples of the mature Romantic style. As the Romantic era progressed, composers began pushing the harmonic envelope further, and that late Romantic language is typified and further extended by Schoenberg’s Quartet No. 2. The first and second movements exhibit that late Romantic practice of stretching tonality, but they are fairly idiomatic for the time period. It is in the final movement that the real change comes. There is no key signature; the harmonies roam freely across the chromatic scale, in what is considered by many to be the composer’s first real experiment with atonality. It would be a little more than a decade before Schoenberg introduced his 12-tone system, but there is a sense that, with this quartet, the path of modern music has been irrevocably altered.

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.

-Telemann: Gulliver Suite in D Major for 2 violins
-Pachelbel: Canon and Gigue in D Major for 3 violins and continuo
-Vivaldi: Sonata in D minor for 2 violins and continuo, RV 63,“La Follia”
-Bach: Trio Sonata in C minor for flute, violin, and continuo from The Musical Offering

Today’s podcast offers up a menu of Baroque treats. Telemann’s suite, a five-movement work inspired by Jonathon Swift’s immensely popular novel Gulliver’s Travels, offers playful depictions of some of the story’s main characters. Next is Pachelbel’s canon, followed by a series of virtuosic variations on a famous 16th century tune and harmonic progression, “La Follia.” The theme has been set by dozens of composers over the centuries, and Vivaldi’s version is one of the most famous. We end with Bach’s Trio Sonata from “The Musical Offering.” This composition builds on a highly chromatic tune given to Bach by Frederick the Great of Prussia, who challenged the composer to use it in a six-voice 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.

- Beethoven: Cello Sonata No. 1 in F Major, Op. 5, No. 1
- Beethoven: Sonata in E-flat Major, Op. 31, No. 3, “La Chasse”

Just as in jazz, Baroque music had a “rhythm section” of its own: the continuo group. The gamba or cello played the bass line and the harpsichord or organ improvised the harmonic accompaniment. At the time that Beethoven wrote his first cello sonata it was still relatively rare to feature the cello as a solo chamber music instrument. Also unique was the import Beethoven placed on the keyboard part; its lines are far from mere harmonic accompaniment. Written throughout the course of his career, Beethoven’s piano 32 sonatas were a vital part of the evolution of the solo piano repertoire and they demonstrate the progress of the piano itself, as an instrument capable of a range of colors and dynamics. The sonata we’ll hear today was written about halfway through the group. The jocular mood throughout, and a final-movement theme reminiscent of a French horn call, may have inspired the nickname “The Hunt.”

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.

- Tchaikovsky: Meditation
- Dvorák: String Quintet in G Major, Op. 77

Stravinsky once famously said, “Good composers borrow. Great composers steal.” Today we’ll listen to works by two composers who stole from themselves. “Meditation” began its life as the second movement of Tchaikovsky’s violin concerto, but was rejected and re-cast as the first movement of his Souvenir d'un lieu cher for violin and piano, and finally extracted and published separately, as it is performed in this recording. Dvorák’s String Quintet was originally written as a five-movement work, with an Intermezzo as the second movement, as we hear it performed on this podcast. That movement, however, was cut from the final version of the quintet, and it has had several lives in other arrangements.

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.

- Walter-Küne: Fantasy on Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin
- Chausson: Concerto in D Major for violin, piano and string quartet, Op. 21

Had circumstances been different, Ernest Chausson might well have become one of the most important French composers to bridge the Romantic and modern eras. Chausson led a comfortable upper-class life, studying law at his father’s encouragement prior to taking up composition in his early 20s. He studied with Massenet and then Franck at the Paris Conservatory, and made rapid progress. Still, there was no pressure on Chausson to make a living as a musician, and his output was modest. Chausson did leave behind a number of works that have found a foothold in the repertoire, among them the chamber piece on today’s program. Though it is a work for six instruments, Chausson’s odd title is far more fitting a name than “sextet”. The violin and piano are clearly the stars here, with the quartet acting like a miniature orchestra. Before the Chausson, you will hear Walter-Kune’s Fantasy on Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin. A professor at the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Walter-Kune composed a number of fantasies on operatic themes, a number of which remain favorites with harpists today.

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.