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Chamber Series

4 Concerts
 

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Chamber Music: INSPIRATIONS

At a Glance

Minnesota Orchestra musicians come together in small ensembles to perform cherished classics and innovative new music on Sunday afternoons in the Target Atrium.

Did You Know?

  • Composers often write their best music while traveling abroad, influenced by new surroundings, as was the case for both Dvořák and Hindemith. Listen and be inspired as a new Chamber Music season begins.
  • Mozart and Dvořák’s quintets are both written for a “viola quintet,” or a standard string quartet with the addition of one viola. Mozart was the first composer to establish this instrumentation; he himself was a violist!
  • Dvořák wrote his String Quintet in E-flat major while living in Spillville, Iowa, in 1893. It is often referred to as his American Quintet and was composed around the same time as his very popular American String Quartet.
  • Throughout his career, Hindemith composed a sonata for nearly every instrument in the orchestra. The Double Bass Sonata was one of the final ones in his collection, composed while he was on vacation in New Mexico. It was followed only by one other—his Sonata for Tuba and Piano.

Program and Artists

HINDEMITH
Sonata for Bass and Piano / 13 min

MOZART
String Quintet in C major / 30 min

INTERMISSION / 20 min

SCHUBERT
String Trio in B-flat major  / 9 min

DVOŘÁK
String Quintet in E minor / 34 min

Accessibility at Orchestra Hall

Assisted listening devices available Large print program available Wheelchair seating availableService dogs welcomePlease refrain from using strong perfumes and colognes

Sun Nov 22 4:30pm

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Chamber Music: ARCHITECTURE

At a Glance

Minnesota Orchestra musicians come together in small ensembles to perform cherished classics and innovative new music on Sunday afternoons in the Target Atrium.

Did You Know?

  • A sparkling and exuberant string quintet by Mendelssohn, an emotional string quartet by Benjamin Britten and Brahms’ rhapsodic Sextet make up this winter concert highlighting brilliant musical architecture.
  • Mendelssohn composed his First String Quintet at the age of 17. A few years later, he returned to this piece and rewrote the third movement, replacing the original Minuetto with an Intermezzo dedicated to the memory of his first violin teacher, Eduard Rietz.
  • Benjamin Britten’s First String Quartet received great acclaim soon after it was completed. Musicologists and critics commented on his unmatched ability to create character and emotion through complex harmonies, and found moments in this quartet comparable to music by the likes of Beethoven, Bartók, Haydn and Stravinsky.
  • One theme featured in Brahms’ Sextet was crafted using the letters of a young woman’s first name, Agathe (a soprano with whom he was briefly engaged), which could be recognized within the musical notes A, G, A, H (in German musical terms: B-flat) and E.

Program and Artists

MENDELSSOHN
String Quintet in A major / 30 min

BRITTEN
String Quartet No. 1 / 26 min

INTERMISSION / 20 min

BRAHMS
String Sextet in G major / 34 min

Accessibility at Orchestra Hall

Assisted listening devices available Large print program available Wheelchair seating availableService dogs welcomePlease refrain from using strong perfumes and colognes

Sun Feb 7 4:30pm

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Chamber Music: REFLECTIONS

At a Glance

Minnesota Orchestra musicians come together in small ensembles to perform cherished classics and innovative new music on Sunday afternoons in the Target Atrium.

Did You Know?

  • Reflection on the past can create a spark that leads to great works of art, including these pieces for chamber ensembles by Du Yun, Dmitri Shostakovich, Jean Françaix and Johannes Brahms.
  • Tattooed in Snow, a work written in 2015 by New York-based composer Du Yun, explores the delicate art forms of sand and snow sculpture through the lens of a string quartet.
  • Yun was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Classical Composition in 2019 and was recently selected by The Washington Post as one of the top 35 female composers.
  • For his unique Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano, Brahms reflected on his own past and decided to write a piece that featured the three instruments that he himself knew how to play.
  • Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet earned him the State Stalin Prize in 1941, an award that came with one of the largest cash prizes in chamber music history at the time.

Program and Artists

YUN
Tattooed in Snow / 15 min

SHOSTAKOVICH
Quintet for Piano and Strings / 32 min

INTERMISSION / 20 min

FRANÇAIX
Divertissement for Bassoon and String Quintet / 15 min

BRAHMS
Trio for Violin, Horn and Piano / 35 min

Accessibility at Orchestra Hall

Assisted listening devices available Large print program available Wheelchair seating availableService dogs welcomePlease refrain from using strong perfumes and colognes

Sun Apr 25 4:30pm

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Chamber Music: CHARACTER

At a Glance

Minnesota Orchestra musicians come together in small ensembles to perform cherished classics and innovative new music on Sunday afternoons in the Auditorium.

Did You Know?

  • The final concert of the 2020-21 Chamber Music series teems with character and concludes with Louis Spohr’s Nonet, especially written to showcase the individual characters of its nine featured instruments.
  • Andrew Norman, a participant in the 2004 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute, is a Grammy-nominated composer and a member of the faculty at the USC Thornton School of Music. Gran Turismo was inspired by the unlikely combination of Baroque string playing, Italian futurist art and a car-racing video game.
  • Façade began as an at-home project combining the artistic talents of British poet Edith Sitwell—whose poems were considered abstract, exotic and dramatic—and the young composer William Walton, who found himself “adopted” into the Sitwell family while studying at Oxford University.
  • A child prodigy, composer-pianist Jean Françaix began writing music at the age of ten and was mentored and championed from a very young age by two other French musical geniuses, Maurice Ravel and Nadia Boulanger.

Program and Artists

FRANÇAIX
Woodwind Quartet / 11 min

NORMAN
Gran Turismo for Eight Virtuoso Violinists / 9 min

WALTON
Suite from Façade / 17 min

INTERMISSION / 20 min

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS
Phantasy Quintet / 15 min

SPOHR
Nonet for Strings and Winds in F major / 28 min

Accessibility at Orchestra Hall

Assisted listening devices available Large print program available Wheelchair seating availableService dogs welcomePlease refrain from using strong perfumes and colognes

Sun Jun 13 2pm