poster for 2008 The Unfolding of Music II: Disc 3
× Disc III journeys from Baroque concerti grossi to Prokofiev and Louis Gruenberg, promising a marvelously scenic route. Following the Concerto Grosso in D Major of the great Italian composer and violin virtuoso Arcangelo Corelli and the piquant Oboe Concerto of his lesser known compatriot Benedetto Marcello (a composer greatly admired by J.S. Bach), Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio in e minor firmly establishes eighteenth-century Classicism. Composed in 1789—two years before Mozart’s untimely death—the e minor Trio demonstrates the innovations of musical form and expression crystallized by the composer known as the father of the Classical style. Antonín Dvořák’s lovely Opus 74 Terzetto is among the hallmarks of a subsequent generation: the breathless melodies and harmonic richness of the Romantic composers. Quick on the heels of the Western Classical and Romantic traditions, Sergey Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes and Louis Gruenberg’s Four Diversions for String Quartet—both composed between the First and Second World Wars—bring the listener into a decidedly new world, with a brave new array of musical languages to match.