Join us as the residency closes with favourites of the chamber music repertoire, Mozart’s sunny Clarinet Quintet and Dvorak’s folk inspired piano quintet.Mozart wrote the Clarinet Quintet for his friend and fellow Freemason, the clarinettist Anton Stadler (Mozart referred to it as “Stadler’s Quintet”). What gives the quintet its unique place in chamber music is Mozart’s consummate skill in balancing the distinctive tone colour and technical resources of the clarinet with those of the strings.

Dvořák’s Piano Quintet No. 2 was written as he approached the zenith of his international fame and was composed in the congenial surroundings of his country retreat, Vysoka. Throughout, the powerful drama freely intermixes with numerous sections of pure, euphoric beauty with a constant interlacing of magical dance music abounding with spontaneity and vitality. Dvořák’s direct and poignant lyricism begins with the very first measures for piano and cello and it continues to bubble up in fresh new springs of melody: in pools fountains and waterfalls across all four movements.