Eliot Quartet, Dmitry Ablogin

This chamber music program brings together three masterpieces for piano and strings from three centuries. Gustav Mahler’s early Piano Quartet in A minor – his only chamber music work – already reveals his expressive style: passionate, searching, carried by deep emotionality. Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 14 in E flat major is performed in a chamber music version for piano and string quartet. The reduced instrumentation particularly emphasizes the dialogical delicacy and playful lightness of this work. The finale is Shostakovich’s monumental Piano Quintet op. 57 – a multi-layered work between baroque formal rigor and modern expressivity, between melancholy and grotesque cheerfulness. An evening that impressively demonstrates the tonal diversity and emotional depth of the interplay between piano and strings.