All Souls Chamber Concert

Escape the goblins with a program celebrating all souls and simply scary stuff.  (And expect a special Halloween surprise!)

Charles Ives: Hallowe’en (1906)
Dimitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 (1946)
Edward Elgar: Quintet in A minor for Piano and Strings (1919)

EmmaLee Holmes-Hicks, violin
Bryce Martin, violin
Christopher Nunn, viola
Leo Eguchi, cello
Janice Weber, piano

Charles Ives’s playfully frightful Hallowe’en sets the stage for a program of startling surprise. Composed in the aftermath of the Second World War, Shostakovich’s wildly original third string quartet opens on a cheeky note. Ensuing movements describe a ghostly waltz before fierce “gunshots” introduce a musical battle; we hear an eloquent elegy for the war’s lost souls before a spooky cello solo recalls previous themes in a haunting finale. Sir Edward Elgar’s Piano Quintet, completed near the end of the Great War, blesses the departed – and those left behind – in a masterwork at once macabre, sentimental, and profound.