Program Notes

Last year’s middle concert, all Schubert, struck a chord, suggesting to the board and to the directors the possibility of a sequel, another song cycle paired with an instrumental piece.

To define the program more exactly, Schwanengesang is not a planned cycle, it is a collection of Schubert’s last songs, as serious and searching as the two great cycles Die Schöne Müllerin and Winterreise, but not narrative, its sequence to be decided by its performers.

Moments Musicaux is an ingenuous title, these moments are not fleeting; on the contrary, they idle and dream in way peculiar to this composer, even erupt occasionally in his characteristic startled intensity, a sturdy, eloquent counterpart to his last vocal music.