2004 Schubert Choose Quantity

To represent Vienna, Music@Menlo 2004 featured the music of that great musical capital’s first native son, Franz Schubert. This program of Schubert’s chamber works and songs joins in the tradition of the Schubertiade, the intimate drawing concert setting in which much of the composer’s music was first heard. A selection of songs, from the famous “Erlkönig” to the great song cycle “Die Schöne Müllerin,” illustrate Schubert’s greatest legacy: his more than 600 lieder. Both these works and his charming miniatures for four-hand piano lent themselves perfectly to the Schubertiade setting. The so-called “Trout” Quintet, one of Schubert’s most enduring chamber works, likewise received its world premiere at a private performance among the composer’s friends and peers, despite the grand scale on which the work is conceived.