Performers

BALOURDET QUARTET ANGELA BAE & JUSTIN DEFILIPPIS, violin BENJAMIN ZANNONI, viola RUSSELL HOUSTON, cello VIANO QUARTET LUCY WANG & HAO ZHOU, violins AIDEN KANE, viola TATE ZAWADIUK, cello

Two of today’s most exciting ensembles, Chamber Music America’s 2024 Cleveland Quartet Award winners, Balourdet Quartet and Viano Quartet—praised for their “virtuosity, visceral expression, and rare unity of intention” (Boston Globe)—join forces for a performance of Mendelssohn’s Octet, a work that remains one of the most exhilarating achievements in chamber music.

Mendelssohn wrote the Octet at the age of sixteen for the musicians closest to him—his friends, his teacher, and the circle that gathered in his family’s Berlin home. First performed in that setting, the piece carries the energy of those Sunday musicales, where music was part of daily life—played and shared among intimate friends and family.

The Octet moves with a kind of unstoppable momentum, its ideas passed between eight players with clarity, wit, and joy. In this performance, presented in the round, that sense of exchange is fully alive—music that feels immediate and generous, played in the spirit in which it was first imagined.

Program

FELIX MENDELSSOHN Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20

Tickets

Age 35+: $38 | 22-34: $20 | 21 & Under: Pay what you wish