01/21/2026
Sundays@3 will present The Embassy Series Quartet on February 15. They will play Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130, Richard Strauss’ String Quartet in A Major, Op. 2, and Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade. Beethoven’s set of “late quartets” are sprawling, outrageously complex compositions, swirling with dark undercurrents and barely restrained chaos. The finale of opus 130 was the last piece of music Beethoven completed before his death. Richard Strauss needs no introduction. His orchestral compositions and operas made him among the best-known composers of the late 19th and 20th century. While he did not, in later life, devote much time to chamber music, in his earlier years he composed several instrumental sonatas. Hugo Wolf, a Slovenian, is best known for his many song settings. Today's serenade is one of his very few chamber works. Like Beethoven, who said he was good at nothing but composing, Wolf, at least as a child, was apparently good at nothing but music. His father taught his son violin and piano from the age of 4, but Hugo was dismissed from secondary school in Graz for being "inadequate." His failings may have been motivated by wanting to persuade his father, who thought music should be an avocation not a career, to send him to the Vienna Conservatoire. At 15 Hugo got his wish and started at the Conservatoire, where he made friends with the young Gustav Mahler and, after hearing Tannhäuser and Lohengrin and meeting Wagner himself, joined the pro-Wagner avantgarde.
Chamber music played in an intimate setting by many of the finest professionals in the Baltimore/Washington area.
