Sunday, September 20, 2020, 3:00pm

The Dance Hall presents Concerts by the Bridge at
The John Paul Jones Historic Site,
a free outdoor summer concert series.

Register

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Quite often, scholars point to the stages of grief to explain the K. 516 quintet in G minor, finished in 1787 within days of his father's death. The first movement is an expression of the anguish of grief. "What takes place here," Einstein wrote in Mozart, His Character, His Work in 1962, "can be compared perhaps only with the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane. The chalice with its bitter potion must be emptied, and the disciples sleep." Moving through a menuetto-trio that is nothing other than defiant, then to an adagio that has the meditative quality of a series of prayers of solitude, closing out in a quiet, muted embrace, it seems as though the grief will never let up as the last movement begins again in the minor key and adagio tempo, before finally making the welcome transition to G major and a rollicking 6/8 time, and the restatement of the opening theme in a lighter and more optimistic transformation. However, as it moves to the ending, the chordal ambiguity, occasional dissonance and restlessness continue right to the end.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) At the request of Johannes Brahms' violinist Joseph Joachim, this quintet (1891) was written to be a companion piece to the Opus 88 quintet. The Slavonic-Roma qualities of the piece are a good match to the earlier work, and the piece has delicious autumnal maturity, but it is the explosive energy and symphonic breadth that starts the piece that brings it into the masterpiece realm. The middle movements descend into a more dreamy and contemplative realm, finishing with a Hungarian dance of epic proportions. Brought straight from his sketches for a fifth symphony, when he sent the second draft to his publisher, it was attached with a note: "With this letter you can bid farewell to my music, because it is certainly time to leave off . . ." Thankfully, there was more to come, but you can feel the farewell in this masterful work.

Bring your own blanket or chair(s)
(also please note: facilities are not available)
and enjoy a spatially-distant concert experience



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