Program
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
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Oboe Quartet in F major KV 370
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Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
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The Swan from "The Carnival of the Animals" (arrangement for cello and marimba)
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George Gershwin (1898-1937)
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Selection
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Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943)
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Vocalise op. 34 No.14 (arrangement for double bass and vibraphone)
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
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Horn Quintet in E flat major K 407
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This matinée is traditionally performed by the academy members of the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester. In the 2024/25 season these are:
Mátyás Holló: percussion
Rosa Roquéz Lopez: double bass
Sara Cuadrado Pérez: viola
Tiphaine Lucas: violoncello
Ulysse Othenin-Girard: oboe
Maurin Jenni: horn
Philomène Michel: Violin
Find out more about the Academy of the Luzerner Sinfonieorchester here.
Mozart’s oboe quartet, like his horn quintet, is one of the pinnacle works of classical chamber music. He composed the oboe quartet at the beginning of 1781 for the oboist Friedrich Ramm, who worked in the Mannheim court orchestra. The result is a first, intimate highlight in his chamber music oeuvre. Mozart avoids superficial concertante virtuosity by artfully interweaving the individual parts, especially in the first movement. In the following Adagio in D minor, a finely chiseled cantilena is heard in the oboe over a densely worked string section, which eloquently expands the tonal range of two octaves and can hardly deny its origins in opera. In the concluding Rondo-Allegro, the oboe and violin take turns playing the main theme. This movement is given special movement when Mozart suddenly changes the 6/8 meter in the oboe to an allabreve meter, while the strings continue to play in 6/8. This results in an incredible acceleration of the tempo at the end and an intensification of the virtuoso element.
The horn quintet was probably composed in Vienna at the end of 1782 and was intended for the horn player Joseph Leutgeb, who had been friends with Mozart since their time together in Salzburg. Considering that the horn of Mozart’s time still had to make do without valves and that the player had to produce the chromatic tones using a complicated “plugging technique”, the enormous virtuoso qualities and expressive melody of this work evoke even greater admiration. The use of two violas gives the string sound a slightly dark coloration, which clearly contrasts with the sharply contoured, lighter horn tones. The work captivates with its intimate character, which it gains from the multiple thematic fusion of the two instrumental spheres. It is essentially about motivic dialogs between the instruments. In the first movement, the violin and horn engage in a dialog. Perhaps following the principles of a suite, the second and third movements are motivically intertwined.
The swan from Saint-Saënsʼ “Carnival of the Animals” takes us into a completely different world. It seems to calmly and elegantly make its rounds on the mirror-smooth water. Saint-Saëns composed this “Grande fantaisie zoologique”, as he called the “Carnival” in the subtitle, for a house concert, and in fact this remained the only performance during the composer’s lifetime. He refused to publish it because the expected popularity could have stood in the way of his more serious works.
The “Vocalise” is one of Sergei Rachmaninov’s most popular melodies – a song that was composed and published in 1915 as the last of his 14 Romances op. 34. Originally written for high voice (soprano or tenor) with piano accompaniment, it contains no words and is sung on one vowel only. The song is now performed more frequently in various instrumental arrangements than in the original vocal version.