Beethoven, Barber and Mozart

OSL’s renowned wind players take center stage in classics of the chamber wind repertoire. Samuel Barber intended Summer Music to be a septet for woodwinds, strings, and piano. However, when he began experimenting with the potential tones and technical capabilities of wind instruments, a quintet for winds emerged. While the title suggests a specific mood, Barber said, “It’s supposed to be evocative of summer—summer meaning languid, not killing mosquitoes.” Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major was written during the same breakneck period as his greatest piano concertos, composed for his own concert performances. Here Mozart employs ideas of concerto writing for a previously unexplored interplay of piano and unusual wind grouping—flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon. Mozart himself was more than pleased with the outcome, as he famously wrote to his father, Leopold, after the quintet’s premiere: “I consider it the best work I have ever written. How I wish you could have heard it, and how beautifully it was performed!” Pianist Zhu Wang, who joins OSL wind players in this classic example of true chamber dialogue, has gained praise for his Mozart interpretations, with Spokane’s The Spokesman-Review acclaiming, “The miracle of performing Mozart as well as Zhu Wang does is that it produces the effect of complete spontaneity.” Wang is also featured in Beethoven’s woodwind-focused Gassenhauer Trio, and a wind arrangement of Richard Strauss’s Til Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks.