Boston Chamber Music Society: Haydn, Shostakovich, Mozart

Haydn: Piano Trio in C major, Hob. XV:27
Shostakovich: Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57
Mozart: Viola Quintet in C major, K.515

Yura Lee & Alexi Kenney, violins | Dimitri Murrath & Marcus Thompson, violas | Edward Arron, cello | Max Levinson, piano

Joseph Haydn wrote the Piano Trio in C major on the heels of his second London trip, freshly enamored with the new, robust English pianos and the virtuosic talents of pianist Therese Jansen Bartolozzi, the work’s dedicatee. Revived by Mendelssohn in the 1830s, the trio features a rollicking sonata-rondo finale that recalls the energy of Haydn’s beloved “Gypsy Rondo.”

Following hospitalization for a near-breakdown amidst political pressures in 1938, Dmitri Shostakovich, channeling Bach, found formal and emotional grounding in the daily exercise of writing preludes and fugues. Beginning his Piano Quintet in G this way, Shostakovich pays homage to the great contrapuntal master while imbuing the work with his own harmonic and rhythmic language, always dancing on the edges of Soviet dictates.

A masterpiece of W.A. Mozart’s mature period, the String Quintet in C major offers a balanced presentation of contrapuntal ingenuity and sublime melodic interactions. The work is a paradigm of Classical-era refinement and elegance that spotlights Mozart’s preferred string instrument, the viola.

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