Overview

A celebration of the piano quartet genre. This concert features works by Johannes Brahms, Max Eidinoff, and John Pablo Rojas.

More about the Concert:

This program re-examines the classical piano quartet from a contemporary lens, pairing Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 3, “Werther,” in dialogue with a new commission by emerging composer, Max Eidinoff. This new piece responds both to Brahms’s music and Goethe’s novella, The Sorrows of Young Werther, which Brahms alluded to in relation to his quartet. John Pablo Rojas, in his improvisatory string trio, piece about yourself, creates an evolving harmonic world which complements the emotional landscape spanned by Brahms, Eidinoff, and Goethe.

“If I were not a fool, I could spend the happiest and most delightful life here. So many agreeable circumstances, and of a kind to ensure a worthy man’s happiness, are seldom united. Alas! I feel it too sensibly, – the heart alone makes our happiness!”

– The Sorrows of Young Werther,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Program:

Johannes Brahms – Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60 (1875)

John Pablo Rojas – piece about yourself (2026)

Max Eidinoff – …the heart alone (2026)

Performers:

Claire Hughes – Violin

Megan Wike – Viola

John Pablo Rojas – Cello

Joseph Kruse – Piano