Danish composer Carl Nielsen was born on the island of Fyn (Funen) between Jutland and Sjaeland. His father, an excellent fiddler and cornet player, was a house painter. Nielsen learned the violin and a variety of brass instruments, played in the village band, and, from age 14, in the local regimental band in Odense. He taught himself piano, and formed a string quartet with friends, in which he explored the classical repertoire. From 1883-86, Nielsen studied violin, music history and composition at the Royal Conservatoire in Copenhagen, where his teachers included Niels Gade. In 1889, he joined the second violins of the Royal Chapel Orchestra and Royal Theater Orchestra in Copenhagen. He left this post in 1905 to devote more time to composing. From 1908 until the outbreak of World War I, Nielsen conducted at the Royal Opera, and toured throughout Europe. He was Music Director of the Musik Foreningen (Music Society) from 1915-27. Nielsen taught at the Conservatoire and became a member of the Board of Governors in 1915. He was named its director a few months before his death.

Nielsen's early music shows the influence of romanticism, especially Grieg and Brahms. Like every composer of his generation, he had an intense (if short-lived) attraction to Wagner. Unlike some of his contemporaries, who bridged the musical gap between the Romantic era and the 20th century, his music became increasingly experimental, individual, and dissonant, although he was not enthusiastic about the more extreme trends in modern music.

Nielsen's "Wind Quintet," his last chamber work, was written during a conducting engagement in Gothenberg, Sweden in 1922. One evening in 1921, the Copenhagen Wind Quintet was rehearsing with the pianist Christian Christiansen. When Nielsen phoned to speak to the pianist, he heard the Quintet continue to rehearse in the background. Nielsen was so intrigued with the sound that he came over to follow the remainder of the rehearsal. He told the oboist, Svend Christian Felumb, that he planned to write a wind quintet in which the different characteristics of the instruments and their players would be clearly portrayed.

The first movement is a standard sonata form (exposition- development-recapitulation), and the second a rustic "Menuet." The third movement begins with a dark and stormy "Praeludium" which features the Cor Anglais with impetuous outburst from the clarinet. (Nielsen had strong feelings for the clarinet - "at once warm-hearted and completely hysterical, gentle as balm and screaming as a streetcar on poorly lubricated rails," he wrote. The Quintet's clarinetist, Aage Oxenvad, intensified these characteristics in his playing - "Oxenvad has made a pact with Trolls and Giants. He has a TEMPER; a primitive force, harsh and clumsy, with a smattering of blue-eyed Danish amenity," wrote one critic.) The main body of the movement is a theme with eleven variations, based on one of Nielsen's chorales from his "Salmer og aandelige Sange" (Hymns and Sacred Songs). Each of the instruments is given a leading role in the course of the eleven variations, which ends with a march for the clarinet, and a restatement of the chorale tune with a slight alteration. The "Wind Quintet" was first performed on October 9, 1922, and was recorded by the Copenhagen Wind Quintet (see below) in January 1936.

Recordings: "Nielsen: The Historic Recordings" Clarinet Classics (Qualiton) CC0002 - remastered recording by the Copenhagen Wind Quintet, along with the Clarinet Concerto, and Serenata In Vano.
Sony SMT 46250 - Marlboro Festival 40th Anniversary - Paula Robison, flute; Joseph Turner, oboe; Larry Combs, clarinet; William Winsted, bassoon; Richard Solis, horn. Also Samuel Barber, "Summer Music" and Hindemith "Octet."

Harvey Stokes is currently Associate Professor of Music at Hampton University, where he is also founder and director of the Computer Music Laboratory. His degrees are from Michigan State University, University of Georgia, and East Carolina University. Stokes has received the Billy Taylor Music Merit Award, the Lancaster Summer Arts Festival Orchestral Composition Prize, and the New Works Competition prize, sponsored by the New England Conservatory. His music is published by MMB, Harkie- Coovey Music, and Seesaw Music, and two books are published by Edwin Mellen Press. Stokes' "String Quartet No. 1" is recorded by the Oxford String Quartet. Stokes is a native of Norfolk, Virginia.

The "String Quartet No. 2" was written in 1992 for the Oxford String Quartet. The first movement is a sonata form, the second a two part form, and the third a three part form. Subtle cyclical procedures provide inter-movement unity.

Dmitri Shostakovich became famous outside the Soviet Union not only for his wonderful music, but also for his well publicized run-ins with the Soviet authorities regarding his music. Like Beethoven, Shostakovich produced a series of symphonies, many of which have remained in the mainstream of orchestral repertoire (Nos. 1,5,6,7,8,9,10), as well as a series of highly personal and intimate chamber music works which include 16 string quartets, piano trios, and the "Quintet for Piano and String (1940)" heard on today's concert.

The "Quintet" was first performed in Moscow on November 23, 1940 by Shostakovich himself with the Beethoven Quartet. Twenty years later it was recorded for the first time by the same performers, and this recording is still available (see below).

Recording: Vanguard Classics OVC 8077 - Dmitri Shostakovich, piano, with the Beethoven Quartet.