Boccherini Oboe Quintet No. 18 in D Minor, Op. 55

Boccherini was a virtuoso cellist and worked first in his native Lucca and then in Vienna, before moving to Paris and thence to Spain, where he seems to have remained from 1768 until his death. There he was in the service of the Infante Don Luis and various other patrons, and was appointed court composer to King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Prussia (himself a cellist, although there is no evidence of his actual presence at Potsdam). He died in apparent poverty in 1805.

 VIDEO: Artist: Lajos Lencses Ensemble: Parisii Quartet Composer: Luigi Boccherini Oboe Quintet No. 18 in D Minor, Op. 55, No. 6, G. 436: II. Minuetto · Lajos Lencses
 

Boccherini: Quintet for Guitar No.4 'Fandango' in D major

Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini (February 19, 1743 – May 28, 1805) was an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Boccherini is most widely known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No. 5 (G 275), and the Cello Concerto in B flat major (G 482). The latter work was long known in the heavily altered version by German cellist and prolific arranger Friedrich Grützmacher, but has recently been restored to its original version. Boccherini composed several guitar quintets, including the "Fandango", which was influenced by Spanish music. His biographer Elisabeth Le Guin[2] noted among Boccherini's musical qualities "an astonishing repetitiveness, an affection for extended passages with fascinating textures but virtually no melodic line, an obsession with soft dynamics, a unique ear for sonority, and an unusually rich palette of introverted and mournful affects." WIKIPEDIA

 VIDEO: Boccherini: Fandango, Sinfonie & La Musica Notturna Di Madrid Interpretes del álbum: Jordi Savall, Rolf Lislevand, Bruno Cocset, Manfredo Kraemer, Pablo Valetti, José da Udaeta & Le Concert des Nations

 

BRAHMS Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34

The Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34, by Johannes Brahms was completed during the summer of 1864 and published in 1865. It was dedicated to Her Royal Highness Princess Anna of Hesse. Like most piano quintets composed after Robert Schumann's Piano Quintet (1842), it is written for piano and string quartet (two violins, viola and cello). The piece is in four movements. The work began life as a string quintet (completed in 1862 and scored for two violins, viola and two cellos). Brahms transcribed the quintet into a sonata for two pianos (in which form Brahms and Carl Tausig performed it) before giving it its final form. Brahms destroyed the original version for string quintet, but published the Sonata as opus 34 bis. The outer movements are more adventurous than usual in terms of harmony and are unsettling in effect. The introduction to the finale, with its rising figure in semitones, is especially remarkable. Piano and strings play an equally important role throughout this work. WIKIPEDIA

 VIDEO: Peter Serkin, the Orion String Quartet Brahms: Piano Quintet in F Minor April 18, 2010 at 92nd Street Y

 

Schubert: Das Forellen Quintett/Trout Quintet D.667 Op114

The Trout Quintet is the popular name for the Piano quintet in A major, D. 667, by Franz Schubert. The work was composed in 1819, when he was 22 years old; it was not published, however, until 1829, a year after his death. Rather than the usual piano quintet lineup of piano and string quartet, Schubert's piece is written for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass. The composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel had rearranged his own Septet for the same instrumentation, and the Trout was actually written for a group of musicians coming together to play Hummel's work. The piece is known as the Trout because the fourth movement is a set of variations on Schubert's earlier Lied "Die Forelle" (The Trout). The quintet was written for Sylvester Paumgartner, of Steyr in Upper Austria, a wealthy music patron and amateur cellist, who also suggested that Schubert include a set of variations on the Lied. WIKIPEDIA VIDEO: Franz Schubert: Das Forellen Quintett/Trout Quintet D.667 Opus 114 A Major Juhani Lagerspetz, Sini Simonen, Steven Dann, Franz Ortner, Michael Seifried at the 15th Esbjerg International Chamber Music Festival 2013. 25th August at South Denmark's Music Academy