Program:
Nino Rota, Trio for Clarinet, Cello and Piano (1973)
Nicola LeFanu, Nocturne for cello and piano, and Lullaby for clarinet and piano (1988)
Aram Khachaturian, Trio for Violin, Clarinet and Piano (1932)
Einojuhani Rautavaara, "Whispering" for Violin and Piano (2010)
Artists:
Sangwon Lee, clarinet
Grant Houston and Yoonhee Lee, violins,
Anna Griffis, viola
Joseph Gotoff, cello
Concert at 6:30/doors 6pm
Join us for our second concert of the 2026 season on June 24! 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 traces a historical arc through three transformations of the clarinet trio: from Bruch's twilight Romanticism to Khachaturian's exotic modernism to LeFanu's contemporary lyricism.
Max Bruch composed his Eight Pieces, Op. 83, in 1909 in his seventies for his son, a clarinetist, offering the aging Romantic a final moment of lyrical reflection. These pieces favor rich, mellow instrumental hues and autumnal maturity of expression, with melancholy opening themes that resolve into quiet nobility—a farewell to a musical language Bruch had perfected across a lifetime. Aram Khachaturian's Trio, composed in 1932 while still a student at the Moscow Conservatory, answers with a younger voice steeped in a different inheritance: a blend of classical form with exotic folk elements that speaks of Eastern Eurasian traditions. Where Bruch distills, Khachaturian ornaments—his rhapsodic first movement unfolds through gypsy-like improvisations, and his finale spirals through variations on Uzbek folk melody.
Nearly sixty years on, Nicola LeFanu's Lullaby for clarinet and piano and Nocturne for cello and piano (1988) return to intimacy and restraint. Written in an era that has absorbed both her predecessors, these miniatures speak quietly but assuredly: music that honors the clarinet and cello as human voices in conversation, yet in a contemporary idiom stripped to essentials. Together, these three works chart a shared chamber ideal—the belief that truth lives in melody, color, and close musical dialogue.