Shostakovich, Mozart & More

SHOSTAKOVICH Two Pieces for String Octet (10')
MOZART Quintet for Piano and Wind in E flat K452 (20')
POULENC Oboe Sonata (13’)
SCHOENBERG Verklärte Nacht (30')

With Ensemble 360 once again joined by members of the Elias String Quartet, this is an expansive programme of some of the most exciting writing for strings from the 20th century, interspersed with two very different, but equally glorious, works for piano and wind.

Mozart’s majestic Quintet was, according to a letter he wrote to his father shortly after its first performance, a piece he considered one of the finest he had ever written. Poulenc’s profound and stylish late Oboe Sonata is an elegy both to its dedicatee Prokofiev and a farewell to life itself, being the composer’s final work. Early pieces shot through with spirituality and revolution (by Shostakovich and Schoenberg, both of whom celebrate anniversaries in 2025) bookend this concert.