Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)

String quartet in E flat major, Op.12

Mendelssohn's marvelous quartets are beloved by string ensembles and audiences the world over. Harold Schonberg once wrote: "He started playing piano at four, was composing at eight, by which time he had memorized all the Beethoven symphonies.” While still an adolescent, he reached maturity as a composer; he was a prodigy on both piano and violin. An exceptional athlete, a talented poet, he excelled at virtually anything he put his mind to. He won the praise and friendship of Goethe.
The opening of the E flat quartet has obvious melodic similarities to Beethoven’s Harp quartet, also in E flat. The two main themes in this sonata-allegro movement are related to each other, but the opening theme never really recurs in its entirety. A brief canzonetta, the best known of Mendelssohn's string quartet movements replaces the traditional minuet/scherzo. The middle section evokes the "fairy" music from A Midsummer Night's Dream, composed three years earlier.

Franz Schreker (1878-1934)

Der Wind - Quintet for clarinet, violin, viola, cello & piano

The eldest son of an Austrian court photographer, Schrecker is principally known today for his operas. He studied violin and composition from 1892 to 1900 at the Vienna Conservatory, achieving his first success in 1908 with a ballet. That same year, he founded the Philharmonic Choir, which he conducted until 1920, when was made director of the Berlin Hochschule. His students were rising talents, part of an adventurous avant-garde, their works feted in concert halls and opera houses all over Germany, until, almost without exception, the Third Reich forced them into exile and banned their music. In 1932, the shock of being dismissed from the Prussian Academy of Arts, for being Jewish, caused his fatal heart attack.
Composed in 1909, Der Wind is a commissioned work after a poem written by dancer Grete Wiesenthal.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)

Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (Ruckert Lieder) arranged for clarinet & string quartet by Simon Aldrich

Many consider Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen, written in 1901, as Mahler’s greatest song, one of his most profound and moving works and was of immense personal significance for Mahler. Composed originally for voice and piano, at the height of Mahler's powers, Ich bin der Welt was premiered in Vienna on 29 January 1905. As with many Mahler's songs, "Ich bin der Welt" is intimately related to his symphonies, both exploring aspects of world-weariness and sadness, the symphony resolving in ecstatic triumph, the song in serene rapture. Based on a poem by Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866):

I am lost to the world
with which I used to waste so much time,
It has heard nothing from me for so long
that it may very well believe that I am dead!
It is of no consequence to me
Whether it thinks me dead;
I cannot deny it,
for I really am dead to the world.
I am dead to the world's tumult,
And I rest in a quiet realm!
I live alone in my heaven,
In my love and in my song!

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Piano Quintet in f minor, Op. 34

Brahms began work on the Quintet during 1862. Originally the piece was cast for string quintet with two cellos. In August of that year, he sent the first three movements to friend and mentor Clara Schumann and to violinist Joseph Joachim. Both responded enthusiastically, “I do not know how to start telling you the great delight your Quintet has given me,” Clara wrote. “The details of the work show some proof of overpowering strength,” Joachim noted, “but what is lacking, to give me pure pleasure, is, in a word, charm.”
By February 1863, Brahms had recast the String Quintet as a Sonata for two pianos. The reaction was less enthusiastic. Clara suggested he remodel it one more! One final time, during the summer of 1864, Brahms revised the score, this time as a Quintet for piano, two violins, viola and cello. The first movement opens with a restrained allegro in sonata form, from which the theme explodes in fuller glory. Throughout the quintet, the intricate relationships between themes and motifs are explored, bringing to surface an extraordinary balance between freedom and logic in the composition.