Welcome to Our 2013-2014 Season

Dear Friends,

We cannot say enough “thanks” for the support you give to keep the music flowing. Now more than ever our response to the violence we encounter must be the greater passion with which we embrace the music we love, and each other.

Our thirty-first season offers a return to the romantic spirit with a four–concert Summer Series that offers great familiar masterpieces along with works by those whose names, as well as their inspired creations, should be better known.

Just as we concluded last season’s Sanders Series with one of the great works of Schubert, the Cello Quintet in C major, so we begin the fall with his Fantasie in F minor for Piano Four Hands. Also on the opening program we celebrate the brilliance of youth in William Walton’s Piano Quartet in D minor. And speaking of early work by music wunderkind, we are excited to conclude the season with our first performance of  Mendelssohn’s Piano Sextet in D major.

In each of the three series—Summer, Sanders and MIT—we play one of the three Brahms piano quartets after an absence of several seasons. In the dark of winter (December and January) we present masterpieces of Brahms beside two of the richly rewarding quintets by the man known as the Russian Brahms, Sergei Taneyev.

Our foray into the French favorites includes Fauré’s ethereal Piano Quintet in C minor and the Octet for Winds and Strings by Françaix. We do not neglect the classics: Mozart shines through from first concert to last with his last Sonata for Violin and Piano in October, the monumental Divertimento for String Trio in E-flat major in February, and the pastoral Horn Quintet in May.

We are grateful that the first fruit of our new Commissioning Club, a new work by George Tsontakis, will be heard first by the club contributors and then by our Sanders audience in an April premiere.

Join us in sharing the focus, intimacy, and unity of the chamber music experience with masterful and revelatory performances by world-class players.

Let our music refresh you.

Marcus A. Thompson, Artistic Director