SUMMER ’26
Brahms: Clarinet Quintet
Ravel: String Quartet
Kane:“Convergence”

Jonathan Kane, (composer‑in‑residence): “Convergence” for string quartet
Johannes Brahms: Clarinet Quintet, op. 115
Maurice Ravel: String Quartet

Charter Oak String Quartet (Sylveen, Myftaraj, Kane, Sears)
Jonathan Towney, clarinet

Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet (1891), composed for Richard Mühlfeld, is a late‑style masterpiece suffused with autumnal warmth. The clarinet blends seamlessly into the strings, its voice carrying lyrical melancholy in the opening movement. A tender Adagio follows, serene yet pierced by a passionate outburst. The Andantino offers grace and charm, leading into a playful scherzo. The Finale returns to darker hues, weaving earlier themes into variations that dissolve into quiet resignation—an intimate, profoundly moving farewell.

Ravel’s String Quartet in F major (1903), dedicated to Gabriel Fauré, dazzles with radiant lyricism and daring harmonic color. Its sparkling scherzo, with pizzicato rhythms and exotic inflections, reveals Ravel’s fascination with Spanish and Eastern sonorities. The slow movement glows with dreamlike beauty, while the finale bursts with rhythmic vitality.

Jonathan Kane’s “Convergence” is a musical exploration of the mathematical concept of the alternating convergent series. Two separate themes are presented, one heavy and dark, the other open and airy. As the piece oscillates between the two themes, they transform, each becoming more like the other until they meet in the center. The instruments, too, converge, with first the viola and cello and later all four joining together to end the piece in unison. The quartet was written while Kane was a student at the Eastman School of Music, studying both composition and mathematics, as an attempt to bridge the seemingly disparate fields of math and music. It was originally performed by the Ying Quartet, quartet in residence at the Eastman School.