NEWBURYPORT CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL: CONCERT #1

Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 6  Newburyport can’t ever seem to get enough of Shostakovich so we return this season with his sixth quartet. However, if you are seeking the usual bleak fare you’ll be in for a disappointment; this is a playful work, even happy, with gentle humor and a lack of irony and shows an optimism we don’t usually associate with the depressed Russian master.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: String Quartet in D Minor, K. 421  This quartet is unrelentingly dramatic from the first moment to the last. Written two years before the opera Don Giovanni (about an unrepentant lothario dragged screaming into the pits of hell), this dark work is one of Mozart’s only quartets written in a minor key.

 Henri Dutilleux: String Quartet “Ainsi la Nuit” (Thus the Night)  This is a beautiful, profound work and a meditation, of sorts, on the meaning of night.