Arioso

50 years of chamber concerts in Heidelberg: Since 1975, members of the Heidelberg Philharmonic Orchestra have enriched the city's musical life with chamber concerts - initially as ‘Rathauskonzerte’, later in the Palais Prinz Carl and today in the Alter Saal. The series continues to showcase the orchestra's artistic diversity beyond the big stage. To celebrate its 50th anniversary, a weekend of festivities invites you back to these historic venues.

Hindemith in search of a new classicism in melody, counterpoint and form: Premiered in Salzburg on 7 August 1923, his clarinet quintet consists of three quick movements framed by two slow ones: One canonical movement that is characterised as »quiet« and composed in a three-part »Lied« form, and the expressive arioso. A scherzo-like »Ländler« (Austrian folk dance) forms the middle. First and last movement are almost identical, yet different: In his last movement, Hindemith uses the first movement in reverse, also called a crab motion.

In 1855, Johannes Brahms planned three piano quartets of which he had completed two by 1861. Not least because of its brilliant last movement, a rondo alla zingarese, his first piano concert is the best known and most popular. Brahms included it in the programme of his first public appearance as pianist and composer in Vienna in 1862.