The Schumann Quartet, Gilles Vonsattel, Yura Lee, and Tommaso Lonquich play Haydn and Mozart

Viennese classicism pays an extended visit to Alice Tully Hall in this lyrical and elegant concert program of chamber music by the oft-paired masters Haydn and Mozart. Their music is marked by the Enlightenment ideals of sophisticated and equilibrated artistic expression. It is out of these principles that Mozart gave voice to new eloquent instruments like the clarinet, and that Joseph Haydn crystallized the classical string quartet as a conversation between four different but equally important voices, definitively emancipating the cello and viola from their accompanying roles to become active melodic—and not just harmonic—participants in musical discourse. 

For Richard E. Rodda, Haydn’s String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 76, No. 4 “could only have been composed by one whose long and rich experience of life is matched by a transcendent mastery of technique." Mozart’s Trio for Clarinet, Viola, and Piano in E-flat Major puts two instruments of similar tessitura in a dialogue that is perfectly articulated in this performance by Tommaso Lonquich, Yura Lee, and Gilles Vonsattel. An exceptional opportunity to experience one of the masterpieces Mozart composed for virtuoso clarinet pioneer Anton Stadler, a close friend and muse who also inspired the groundbreaking Clarinet Quintet and Clarinet Concerto!