The First Muse series has a huge presence in this year's Performance Rochester, and with good reason: founder and artistic director Melissa Matson decided to end the series with one last concert in November, 2018. We're giving this mainstay of Rochester chamber music series a big farewell with six appearances throughout the month.
And so we come to the last appearance of First Muse on Performance Rochester: Mozart's Piano Quartet in E-flat from "Nakamatsu and Amenda Meet Mozart & Dohnanyi," the final First Muse concert. Three fourths of the Amenda Quartet (David Brickman, violin; Melissa Matson, viola, Mimi Hwang, cello) and pianist Jon Nakamatsu joined forces for a light and elegant reading of a work Mozart wrote on a whim. He had been commisioned for three piano quartets, sent his publisher the first, and it was duly rejected as being too difficult. Released from his contract, Mozart wrote this, the second, anyway.
Listen to the second movement.
