6/5/26, 6 PM — Foundry Vineyards
WWCMF will add your name and the number of tickets you purchase to the concert guest list. We will NOT send physical tickets.
Doors open one hour before the performance.
Doors open one hour before the performance.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791)
Piano Quartet No. 2 in E Flat, K. 493 (1786)
I. Allegro
II. Larghetto
III. Allegretto
In June 2025, WWCMF celebrated the 240th anniversary of Mozart’s Piano Quartet in G minor, K. 479 (1785), a stormy affair that eventually finds its way to a joyful conclusion. Therefore, in an uncontroversial example of “equal time,” we now celebrate the 240th anniversary of the G minor’s younger sibling, the Piano Quartet in E flat, K. 493 (1786). Mozart completed K. 493 a few weeks after putting his John Hancock on a little number called The Marriage of Figaro (K. 492!). Therefore, we can be confident that Mozart was squarely in the full bloom of artistic maturity, even as he faced polite society with conspicuous immaturity. We hear the influence of Mozart’s famous opera just five bars into the quartet, echoes of Figaro teasing young Cherubino in the Act I aria, Non più andrai farfallone amoroso (“You shall go no more, lustful butterfly, Day and night flitting to and fro; Disturbing ladies in their sleep…”). No more chasing girls. Time to buckle down and write a piano quartet.
Before the G minor, there had never been such a thing as a piano quartet. The piano trio (piano, violin, and cello) was a well established form and duly considered a beautiful and fertile instrumental combination. How to make this successful combo even more compelling? Elementary. If you want to dial beauty, excitement and substance up to ’11,’ just add a viola. Hence, the piano quartet was born.
Only, “not so fast, my friend,” said Mozart’s publisher, Franz Anton Hoffmeister. Hoffmeister had commissioned three such works from Mozart only to pull the plug early on. He declared the G minor too difficult to play. Sales, he believed, were soft due to the technical demands placed upon the pianist in particular. Indeed, both of Mozart’s Piano Quartets require virtuoso players. We’re in luck that Mozart decided to compose K. 493 anyway. And we’re in luck that virtuoso pianist Oksana Ejokina returns to WWCMF to carry the day along with Festival mainstays Maria Sampen (violin), Norbert Lewandowski (cello) and Founder & Artistic Director, Timothy Christie (viola). Happy anniversary K. 493! 240 years old and still as fresh as the day the ink dried.
Artists: Timothy Christie, viola; Oksana Ejokina, piano; Norbert Lewandowski, cello; Maria Sampen, violin