NHMF: Chamber Music Series Week 3

This is an evening of music that peers beneath the surface of things, conjuring landscapes both outer and inner. Charles Martin Loeffler’s Two Rhapsodies, based on poems about death and lost love, evoke a world of moonlit ponds and ancient bagpipes through a hauntingly beautiful trio of oboe, viola, and piano; the program then culminates in one of the most shattering works in all of chamber music. Written in 1944 as the horrors of the Holocaust were reaching Shostakovich, his Piano Trio No. 2 can be heard as an elegy both for his closest friend and for the war’s millions of victims — filled with pain, anger, melancholy, and mordant wit. Pierre Gabaye’s Récréation opens the evening with sunlight and laughter, making what follows all the more profound.

PROGRAM