Program Notes

The pieces on tonight's concert are all served "with a twist"-- not like a martini, but rather with something unusual about their presentation. They are all works written for instruments other than the exact ones we are using to play them.

It's fun for us to play new or unusual things and we know it is fun to hear them, too. And unlike that martini with a twist, it's not going to be served dry!

Mozart's Sonata in E Minor is the only violin sonata he wrote in a minor key. It is also one the best known, most often played and most loved.

Mozart composed a set of six sonatas for piano and violin, K. 301-306, which he began in Mannheim and published in Paris in November of 1778. They are often referred to as the Paris-Mannheim sonatas.

The passionate character of the fifth work of this group, the Sonata in E minor, K. 304 (1778) is unique among Mozart's works. It is important to note that the composer's mother suffered her last illness and death in Paris, where Mozart and his sister were touring, just before the composition of this two-movement piece.

George Gershwin (1898 - 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned both popular and classical genres. His most popular melodies are universally familiar.

Mr. Gershwin's career had a notably humble beginning. He dropped out of high school at the age of 15 to work for a music publisher in New York, earning $15 per week. He published his first song when he was 17, for which he was paid five dollars!

He wrote most of his vocal and theatrical works, including more than a dozen Broadway shows, in collaboration with his elder brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin.

Clara Schumann was pregnant with her fourth child when she wrote the Trio in G Minor. She and her husband Robert had been studying Bach and Cherubini together during this time, as the pregnancy kept her at home rather than touring and performing on the piano.

Robert had noticed her many good musical ideas but worried that Clara didn't have enough time to compose, because of her career and her family responsibilities. "...I am often disturbed to think of how many tender ideas are lost because she cannot work them out," he said.

Tonight's Trio is a remarkable accomplishment from this period when she had ample time to compose, and is one of her most important works.