Curated by Artistic Director Marcus Thompson, this virtual concert is presented as video and audio on demand. The program includes an introduction by Thompson, a new video performance made especially for the event, interviews of the artists, and favorite archival audio recordings from recent Sanders Theatre concerts approved by the musicians.

New video performance:
Beethoven
Piano Sonata in C minor, Op. 111

From our concert audio archive:
Beethoven
String Trio in C minor, Op. 9 No. 3
Britten
Phantasy Quartet

Featured Musicians:
Peggy Pearson, oboe | Jennifer Frautschi and Yonah Zur, violins | Marcus Thompson, viola | Nicholas Canellakis and Clancy Newman, cellos | Max Levinson, piano

About the Music
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in C minor Op. 111, his final work in the genre, is a culmination of the fugal writing and exploration of variation form that characterized his later piano sonatas. The stormy and densely contrapuntal first movement is answered by the transcendent Arietta, a profound conclusion to this sonata and the thirty-one others that came before.

Beethoven’s String Trio in C minor, Op. 9 No. 3 opens darkly with a descending four-note motive, setting the work’s serious tone. The lighter Adagio balances florid lines in the violin against placid double-stops, while the quick-moving Scherzo and Finale restore the work’s tense atmosphere.

A phantasy is a short piece of music that is written in the spirit of spontaneity and freedom, two qualities which are evident in Britten’s Phantasy Quartet for oboe and string trio. Simultaneously, the nineteen year-old Britten achieves an impressive matureness of expression in this twelve-minute jaunt around the composer’s imagination.