The Age of Reason shares the stage with the Romantic Era in Mistral’s season finale concert, Sense & Sensibility

Robert Schumann was profoundly influenced by literature and by an arduous yearning for the love of his life, Clara Weick.  Music historian Richard Aldrich observed: “Schumann’s chamber music of 1842 is in many ways among the most perfect of all the products of his genius; the purest and most powerful in its beauty, the strongest in its form, best balanced in its substance, and best adapted in its technical means and processes to the expression of the composer’s thought.”

Friedrich Kuhlau, considered to be the flutist’s ‘Beethoven,’ wrote hundreds of sparkling, virtuosic works of chamber music in the quintessential Classical style for the flute, including this winsome quintet.

Unavailable for many years, the Horatio Parker Suite is a beautiful work for piano trio by an American composer from Auburndale, Massachusetts, at the turn of the 20th century.  It is light, appealing, and heavily influenced by the German Romantic composers.

• Parker: Suite for Piano Trio
  Kuhlau: Flute Quintet
  Schumann: Piano Quintet
• Julianne Lee & Ying Xue, violins
  Stephanie Fong, viola
  Kee-Hyun Kim, cello
  Julie Scolnik, flute
  Randall Hodgkinson, piano

Mistral is a unique and engaging ensemble of international concert artists who perform with an irresistible blend of high spirits and serious music-making and connect in a singular way with their audiences.