Works for violin and piano, and for string quintet, performed by violinist Mayuko Kamio, pianist Pei-Yao Wang, and Musicians from Marlboro.
Around this time of year in New England, many people are starting to feel ready for a respite from the snowy cold. For today’s podcast we’ll take a musical vacation of sorts, hearing a bit of what Brahms did with his summers. We’ll begin with the composer’s third violin sonata, which Brahms began work on while vacationing in Thun, a beautiful little Swiss lake town with a picture-perfect medieval castle at the foot of the Alps. He put the piece aside for a couple of years, though, and only got to finishing it when he returned to Thun in the summer of 1888. A few years prior, in the spring of 1880, Brahms discovered one of his favorite vacation spots: Bad Ischl, a town high in the Alps that was apparently a popular retreat amongst 19th-century artists, including Strauss and Bruckner. In the summer of 1880, Brahms wrote two chamber works, including the String Quintet in F Major, a luscious, tuneful work.
