Delight in the richness of 19th-century Romanticism. The journey starts before the era begins with Ludwig van Beethoven’s 1793 Octet, written when the composer was a student of Classical master Joseph Haydn. Almost a century later, Tchaikovsky penned his lush Souvenir de Florence after a trip to Italy. As Tchaikovsky wrote to a patron, “I wrote it with the greatest enthusiasm and the least exertion.” Possibly born of his infatuation with a student, Franck’s late 19th-century Piano Quintet bursts with yearning melodies, its passionate extremes vaulted by Festival fellows side-by-side with faculty artists Sheryl Staples, Brinton Smith, and Robert Levin.
Program
BEETHOVEN Octet TCHAIKOVSKY Souvenir de Florence FRANCK Piano Quintet