2nd Chamber Concert
Leoš Janáček: »Mládí« (Youth) – Suite for Wind Sextet / Camille Saint-Saëns: Romance for Flute and Piano in D-flat Major op. 37 / Clarinet Sonata in E-flat Major op. 167 / Septet in E-flat Major op. 65
Alter Saal
The programme of chamber music works by Camille Saint-Saëns offers the opportunity to get to know the French composer as a chamber musician for various instrumental ensembles.
The Romance for flute and piano was written in 1871. Saint-Saëns' Septet is not only unusual in its instrumentation for trumpet, string quintet and piano, but also in its stylistic reference to suites from the Baroque period. »At the moment I am concentrating my last energies on giving the rarely considered instruments the opportunity to be heard«, Saint-Saëns wrote in 1921, the year of origin of the clarinet sonata.
Leoš Janáček's opera »The Makropoulos Affair« from 1926 is about eternal youth, and a smaller composition was written at almost the same time: the suite for wind instruments »Mládí«, which translates as »Youth«. In his piece, the 70-year-old composer looks back on his young years with their bright and dark sides.