The opening concert of Festival Resonances has a special connection with the closing concert… all the more reason to be there from start to finish!

In a letter to Brahms from 1865, Joachim writes that the piano quintet is a “masterpiece of chamber music, the likes of which we have not seen since 1828”. That was the year Schubert died and wrote his string quintet with two cellos! 
In 1862, Brahms began composing his Op. 34 for string quintet with two cellos, influenced by the success of Schubert’s work in that instrumentation. After the parts for the strings proved unplayably difficult, he completed this masterful composition in 1864 as a piano quintet.
A stirring, magnificent and moving masterpiece!

This concert opens with Haydn’s beautiful Op. 77, No. 2, which he himself called his “most beautiful string quartet”. The distribution of parts between the four instruments is a testament to a pure string quartet, in which each instrument plays an equal role. And it is clear that the elderly composer has not lost his sense of humour. Radiant melodies and intimate dialogues alternate with a peasant dance in which he leaves us in the dark about the metre by using “wrong” entries, and as a finale, a lively “polonaise à la hongroise”.

An opening concert not to be missed!