South Coast Chamber Music Series: "Trifecta"

T. Burleigh: Southland Sketches
Ernő Dohnányi: Piano Quintet No.1, Op.1
Benjamin Britten: String Quartet No. 2, Op. 36

One of America’s most eminent black composers of the early twentieth century, H. T. Burleigh wrote hundreds of art songs and introduced Antonin Dvořák to the spiritual. Southland Sketches, his suite for violin and piano, illustrates the American style that Burleigh did much to promulgate. By contrast, Dohnányi’s C minor Piano Quintet radiates high drama from first note to last. Britten’s second String Quartet, commissioned in commemoration of the 250th anniversary of Henry Purcell’s death, was coincidentally composed following Britten’s recital tour of the newly-liberated concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Britten’s admiration for Purcell’s “clarity, brilliance, tenderness, and strangeness” as well as his horror of war’s depravity find voice in this deeply emotional work.