Program Two: Teachers, Admirers, and Influences

1 pm Preconcert Talk: David Brodbeck
1:30 pm Performance: Jonathon Comfort, baritone; Elaine Daiber, soprano; Kayo Iwama, piano; Piers Lane, piano; Parker String Quartet and guests

Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957)
Passacaglia, from Piano Sonata No. 1 in D Minor (1908–9)
From Sieben Märchenbilder, Op. 3 (1910)
Sextet in D Major, Op. 10 (1914–16)

Max Reger (1873–1916)
Clarinet Quintet in A, Op. 146 (1915–16)

Hans Gál (1890–1987)
From Three Sketches, Op. 7 (1910)

Songs by Robert Fuchs (1847–1927); Alma Mahler (1879–1964); Joseph Marx (1882–1964); Alexander Zemlinsky (1871–1942); Wilhelm Kienzl (1857–1941); and Karl Weigl (1881–1949)

Although better known for his large-scale works, Korngold also made invaluable contributions to the chamber genre. Program Two pairs early examples, like the superlative Sextet in D he wrote at 17, with chamber and vocal music by some of the composers most prominent in the Vienna of his youth. These include such leading lights as Max Reger and Hans Gál; Korngold’s great friend and colleague Joseph Marx; the legendary pedagogue Robert Fuchs, with whom he briefly took lessons as a child; and Alexander von Zemlinsky, under whose longer-term instruction the young prodigy wrote his exquisite Märchenbilder and Passacaglia for solo piano. Zemlinsky also taught Karl Weigl and Alma Mahler, who would – decades later, and on another continent – become the dedicatee of Korngold’s Violin Concerto.