Felix MENDELSSOHN Sextet in D major for Piano and Strings, Op. 110 (1824)
Alyssa Wang, violin; Marcus Thompson, viola; Nicholas Cords, viola; Clancy Newman, cello; Thomas Van Dyck, double bass; Max Levinson, piano
Charles IVES Piano Trio (1904-1911)
Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Edward Arron, cello; Max Levinson, piano
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, K. 364 (1779) (arr. for String Septet)
Jennifer Frautschi, violin; Alyssa Wang, violin; Nicholas Cords, viola; Marcus Thompson, viola; Clancy Newman, cello; Edward Arron, cello; Thomas Van Dyck, double bass
Featured musicians
Max Levinson
Jennifer Frautschi
Alyssa Wang
Nicholas Cords
Marcus Thompson
Edward Arron
Clancy Newman
Thomas Van Dyck
The warm sonorities of Mendelssohn’s Piano Sextet in D major come from the unusual call for two violas. Penned by the fifteen-year-old prodigy, the sextet casts the piano in the virtuosic leading role while strings provide support and ornamentation.
Charles Ives’s Piano Trio draws inspiration from the composer’s days as a student at Yale. The first movement, plodding and serious, comprises 27 measures played three times by different combinations of instruments. According to Ives, the lively second movement evokes “the games and antics by the students on a holiday afternoon.”
Musical ideas pour forth from Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante, sometimes mournfully as in the rare minor mode slow movement, and at other times with supreme joy. In the string ensemble arrangement, the original solo violin and viola parts are redistributed among all instruments, which adds significant color.
