Tonight we feature music of Robert Schumann, György Kurtág, Josh Burel and Andrew Norman.

Our second Festival Series performance invites the clarinet to the fore with works old and new. Robert Schumann, ever given to flights of fantasy, composed his Märchenerzählungen, Op.132 near the end of his compositional life. Loosely translated as “Fairy Tales,” this work for piano, viola, and clarinet does not tell any specific fairy tale but rather evokes certain tropes such as sparkling elven mischief, regal pomp and the lyricism of loneliness. György Kurtag provides modernist counterpoint to Schumann’s foray into the magical with his Hommage à Robert Schumann for the same instrumentation.

Also on the program are works by 21st-century composers Josh Burel and Andrew Norman. Burel, in his Andooni for clarinet quintet, mourns the Armenian genocide of 1915-1923 and Norman, in his Gran Turismo for eight violins imagines an Italian baroque ensemble revving its engines at the speed of an F1 race car. Though each piece inhabits its own unique sphere, each work shares an essential component of storytelling that looks both to the past and the future.