Concert at 6:30/doors 6pm
Program:
Samuel-Coleridge Taylor, Clarinet Quintet (1906)
Brahms Clarinet Quintet (1891)
Artists:
Sangwon Lee, clarinet
Grant Houston and Yoonhee Lee, violins,
Anna Griffis, viola
Joseph Gotoff, cello
Join us for our first concert of the 2026 season on June 22! Advance adult tickets are discounted until a week before the concert. Student, child and other reduced price tickets can be purchased at the door.
About the Program:
Tonight's program pairs two masterworks of the clarinet quintet repertoire: Brahms's autumnal Op. 115, composed in 1891 after a long retreat from public composition and inspired by clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld, and Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Op. 10, written just four years later by a young composer steeped in late-Victorian elegance but possessed of a uniquely warm, folk-inflected lyricism. Where Brahms distills German Romanticism to its reflective essence — hushed yearning themes, tender slow movements, and a quietly resolved finale — Coleridge-Taylor answers with ardent, songlike writing that is formally assured yet emotionally generous, blossoming from poised opening themes to a hopeful, affirmative close. Though separated by nationality and experience, both composers treat the clarinet as a human narrator in intimate dialogue with the string quartet, and together these two quintets chart a shared chamber ideal: music that speaks close and true.