Quintet Conversations: From Mozart to Modern, with Jeremy Denk, Piano

Jeremy Denk, a MacArthur Genius Grant-winning pianist that “you want to hear no matter what he performs” (New York Times), joins Colburn faculty and students in this program of electric quintets. Opening the concert is Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds, a work that masterfully balances the piano against oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon in what the composer described as “the best thing I have written in my life.” Edward Elgar’s Piano Quintet, composed in 1918 in the shadow of World War I, starts on an eerie tone before modulating towards a brighter, more symphonic end. In between these masterworks is Valerie Coleman’s Tzigane, a “passionate journey through woodwind virtuosity” inspired by Ravel’s similarly named Hungarian rhapsody for violin.