Alisa Weilerstein & Trondheim Soloists: Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Schoenberg

From sunny to soulful – enjoy the many moods of three of the finest string sextets of the 19th and 20th centuries, with a majestic American cellist and a leading Norwegian chamber ensemble.

The evening opens with an enchanting sextet by one of the 19th and early 20th century’s most progressive Romantic composers, Richard Strauss, who brings his lush harmonic style and complex textures to his version of elegant 18th-century chamber music.

This sextet serves as the opening to Strauss’ opera Capriccio, set in a French chateau from that time. In the opera, the piece is presented as a gift to a Countess. Music critic Michael Kennedy described Capriccio as ‘the nearest [Strauss] came to unflawed perfection in a work of art.’

Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence finds the composer in a holiday mood, the bouncy opening of the atmospheric sextet evoking the city that gave the piece its name. Sit back and enjoy the flight of fancy, full of glorious melodies, as the piece moves from a tender slow movement into a dramatic third and fourth, featuring folk motifs that Tchaikovsky brought to this Italian scene.

Schoenberg’s lush, almost painfully Romantic Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) manages to combine the chromaticism of Wagner and lyricism of Brahms and introduced Schoenberg as the herald of a brave new century on its premiere in 1903.