WRE SALON | TRANSITION

For a transitional figure between ‘classical’ and ‘romantic’ styles, Beethoven (1770-1827) is often picked by default, while Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91) tends to be regarded as a prime – and exquisitely skilful – exponent of the pure classical style. But this belies the innovation within much of Mozart's music.

As with WRE's pairing last season of Mozart's 40th symphony and Mendelssohn's famous violin concerto, in this concert they explore how Mozart touches on the kind of elegiac, lyrical romanticisms found throughout music of the nineteenth century. Following the ensemble's performances of the clarinet quintet earlier this year, they delve again into Mozart's fascination with the clarinet, which transformed it into a fully-fledged solo, chamber, and orchestral voice. His 'Dissonance’ quartet also pre-figures elements of increasing complexity in nineteenth-century German and Austrian composition, especially in its highly chromatic opening.

Written just over a century on from the Mozart works is the opus 1 quartet for violin, clarinet, cello and piano – the instrumentation perhaps most famously used by Olivier Messiaen in his Quatuor pour la fin du temps (1941) – by Viennese composer Walter Rabl (1873-1940). Rabl is a minor and quite obscure figure, but this work of 1896, which won Brahms’ endorsement, is ‘transitional’ in that it represented a fast-disappearing ancien-regime of classically-rooted style and composition in Vienna, soon to be dominated by the more progressive tendencies of Gustav Mahler, Richard Strauss, Erich Korngold, and others, whom Rabl himself championed as a conductor.

In keeping with the raison d'être of WRE, this concert gives a professional platform to emerging young musicians in an 'apprentice' model. 

PROGRAMME

MOZART: Trio K498 ‘Kegelstatt’ (c.21')
MOZART: String Quartet K465 ‘Dissonance’ (c.30')
RABL: Quartet op.1 for piano, violin, clarinet, and cello (c.26')

David Milsom, violin & viola
Liza Costanzo, violin
Tom Collingwood, cello
Sofia Nikolaeva, clarinet
Jonathan Gooing, piano
Ruth Milsom, piano