Summer Concert IV: Color and Counterweight

Alicia McQuay, harp | Michael McQuay, piano | Erin David & Dallin Hansen, violins | Kristina Horrocks, viola | Nicole Pinnell, cello | Nadine Luke, flute | Adam Ballif, clarinet

The harp sextets of Debussy and Ravel bring something luminous to the first half of the evening, music of atmosphere and precision where color is itself a form of argument. Brahms's First Piano Trio, which opens the second half, offers a deliberate change of weight: direct, structurally assured, and full of the kind of expressive urgency that characterized Brahms at his most personal. These are not obvious companions on paper, but in the concert hall the contrast works beautifully, each half illuminating the other, and the evening arriving somewhere satisfying and whole. The harp and piano, instruments that rarely share a program with such prominence, here find themselves in natural conversation, and the ensemble brings a rare cohesion to an evening of beautiful and deliberate contrasts.