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This season, each of CONTEXT’s six concerts will feature a major composer, with a focus on a particular genre or form. With music from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, the Fourteenth Season showcases CONTEXT’s range of repertoire, performance styles, and instruments.
As always, each CONTEXT concert features stylistically-informed performances on historically-accurate keyboard, string and wind instruments appropriate for each musical era.
All concerts are on Sunday afternoons at 4:00pm.
Programs subject to change without notice
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 Sunday, September 21, 2008 4:00pm - Cancelled
Haydn wrote nearly 30 trios for piano, violin, and cello
during the last 13 years of his creative life. These highly
imaginative works show an unparalleled range of
emotion, from gorgeous melancholy to manic gaiety.
Yet the Trios are largely ignored by modern performers — perhaps because the music is so particularly suited to the
brilliant and expressive sonorities of Haydn’s keyboard and
string instruments. CONTEXT presents a selection of these
unforgettable and affecting works, performed on magnificent
instruments from the period.
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Musicians: Brian Connelly, piano; Sergiu Luca, violin; Allen Whear, cello.
Performed on original instruments
Information regarding the September 21st concert |
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 Sunday, October 26, 2008 4:00pm
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When Ravel toured America in 1928 (performing a
recital and delivering a lecture in Houston), one of the
pieces he played was his recently composed Sonata
for Violin and Piano. Evoking American jazz and blues
as well as his own avant-garde late style, the work exuberantly
shows Ravel’s belief that a composer must draw
from — and personalize — the styles of vernacular music.
Perfomed with the Sonata for Violin and Cello, and his
last composition: the Three Songs of Don Quixote for
Bass-Baritone and Piano. |
Musicians: Brian Connelly, piano; Timothy Jones, baritone; Michael Kannen, cello; Sergiu Luca, violin.
Performed on modern instruments
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 Sunday, December 7, 2008 4:00pm
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This concert presents two of Bartok’s greatest chamber
works, from different periods in his creative life.
A dizzying blend of Impressionism, Expressionism,
and avant-garde experimentation, and drenched in
the energetic idioms of Eastern European folk music,
the Sonata #1 for Violin and Piano, from 1921, represents
Bartok at a high point of his earlier work. Composed in
1937 as Europe slid toward war, The Sonata for Two Pianos
and Percussion is one of Bartok’s most evocative and
powerful creations. |
Musicians: Ahn; Cangelosi; Brian Connelly, piano; Sergiu Luca, violin; Tsalikis.
Performed on modern instruments |
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 Sunday, January 25, 2009 4:00pm
CONTEXT’s very first concerts, in 1985, presented the
first Houston performance of all of Mozart’s ‘Two-Viola’
Quintets on original instruments. This season we bring
fourteen years of further experience to two of these awe-inspiring
compositions, considered by many to be
Mozart’s best chamber works. CONTEXT’S quintet of
renowned period-instrument performers will present the
Quintets in G Major and E-flat Major.
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Musicians: Fonteneau; Sergiu Luca, violin; Cristian Macelaru, violin; Max Mandel, viola; Richard Wolfe, viola. Performed on original instruments |
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 Sunday, February 22, 2009 4:00pm
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Erwin Schulhoff’s dazzlingly original and energetic music is
only just becoming known to concertgoers. A gifted Czech
composer and pianist, he lived a life of creative experimentation:
raised on the Romantics, entranced by the artistic and
musical innovations of the early 20th century, and especially
enchanted by American jazz. CONTEXT presents selections
from Schulhoff’s music from the 1920s: the Duo for Violin and
Cello, Five Pieces for String Quartet, and the Concertino
for Flute, Viola, and Double Bass, along with several of
his wildly inventive jazz-inspired pieces for solo piano. |
Musicians: Richard Belcher, cello; Leone Buyse, flute; Brian Connelly, piano; Joan DerHovsepian, viola; Gronfer; Cristian Macelaru, violin; Wagner. Performed on modern instruments |
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 Sunday, March 29, 2009 4:00pm
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Dvorak’s Trios for Violin, Cello, and Piano are some of
his most beloved and frequently played works — but
you’ve likely never heard them performed on original
instruments! CONTEXT’s season-ender presents two
of Dvorak’s Piano Trios—in B-flat Major and F Minor
— played on magnificent Romantic era string instruments
and a beautiful 19th century Bösendorfer
piano. |
Musicians: Brian Connelly, piano; Michael Kannen, cello; Sergiu Luca, violin. Performed on original instruments |
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