Perhaps Bach’s best-known orchestral works, the Brandenburg concertos are performed often in concert, but this final concerto is not quite as famous as some of its predecessors. Bach chooses a mellow instrumentation for this concerto—all low strings, from viola down to cello and violone, an early bass instrument. But even with the unusual instrumentation, the piece is still signature Bach, with wonderful counterpoint, dance rhythms and variations. Next is Schumann’s famous song cycle “Dichterliebe.” In typical German Romantic fashion, the topic at hand is love, in this case the love of a poet. Our poet starts out optimistic, if not entirely secure, in the first song. But as the cycle progresses, the narrator becomes increasingly disenchanted, going from denial to overt sorrow in the final song, in which he longs to bury his songs, his dreams and his love The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

Johannes Brahms came to Robert and Clara Schumann’s home on September 30th of 1853, as a young composer just 20 years old, and remained a close friend of both for the rest of their lives. The Schumann’s provided the young Brahms with emotional, professional and musical support, and they were instrumental in his early successes. The trios we’ll hear today are among the shortest these composers wrote. First is Schumann’s Fantasiestücke, Op. 88. Written just after Robert Schumann’s happy marriage to Clara, the work is generally light in tone, and contains wonderfully catchy melodies. Next we’ll listen to Brahms’s Trio in C minor, a mature work written well after Schumann’s death. In his earlier work, Brahms paid more literal homage to Schumann. In this trio, Brahms is a more established composer, and speaks with his own voice, but his ongoing interest in chamber music was undoubtedly influenced by Schumann. Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

At age 19, Alban Berg began studying composition with Arnold Schoenberg, and his sonata shows the influence of Schoenberg’s teaching in its adventurous use of extended harmony and his insistence on a clear and coherent structure in which each of the sonata’s ideas is based on a single, central motive. Of course, the idea of using a motive to structure a piece was one which Schoenberg himself borrowed from the next composer on today’s program, Beethoven. The Appassionata Sonata was composed during one of the most difficult, but productive, periods of Beethoven’s life. During this time Beethoven began to display bold new harmonic ideas, as in the opening of this sonata, in which the phrase is repeated just a half-step higher, placing the sonata suddenly in ambiguous harmonic territory. He also increasingly used these motives to structure longer pieces of music, the idea that so influenced Schoenberg and, in turn, Berg. Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

The clarinet is a bit of a chameleon. Equally at home as a woodwind section member in Mozart’s classical symphonies or playing solo in Gershwin’s famous glissando at the start of “Rhapsody in Blue,” the clarinet can switch settings with ease. Even within a single piece, the differences in timbre—dusky at the bottom and piercingly bright at the top—can make a single clarinet seem like several different instruments. This week we’ll listen to a couple of different pieces that feature the clarinet, and all its many colors. Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

We often think of classical music as having a specific geographic origin, and indeed there are a lot of generalizations that can be made about the classical traditions of different countries. The French we often think of as expert colorists, the Germans as very structural in approach, and the Italians as melodic masters. But with a piece like Souvenir de Florence, a Russian composer’s memory of Florence, Italy, presented under a French title, those generalizations won’t help you much. Before the sextet, we’ll hear a set of three songs by Russian composers, starting with Glinka’s “Train Song” and ending with Mussorgsky’s famous “Song of the Flea.” In the middle is Tchaikovsky’s aria “Don Juan’s Serenade.” In fact, this song was part of a set begun during one of Tchaikovsky’s trips to Florence. In “Don Juan’s Serenade” we have Spanish character, a Russian poem and an Italian vacation. You definitely can’t pin it down by geography, but when the music is this enjoyable, who cares? Recorded live in the Tapestry Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is pleased to share this concert under a Creative Commons Music Sharing License. For details see www.gardnermuseum.org.

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