Brahms & Ice Cream
A Chamber Concert for Piano & Strings
Saturday, November 22, 2025
3:00 PM at Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Annapolis
A young Brahms completed his heartfelt Piano Quartet No. 3 in 1875. The music crackles with intimacy and drama, inspired both by Goethe’s 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther and by Brahms’s unrequited love for Clara Schumann, the wife of his friend Robert Schumann. In Goethe’s novel, the titular character Werther takes his own life after falling in love with a woman promised to another man. Later in life, Brahms confessed to his publisher, “On the cover you must have a picture, namely a head with a pistol to it. Now you can form some conception of the music! I’ll send you my photograph for the purpose.” The quartet unfolds in four movements, in which the piano, violin, viola, and cello trade fierce gestures and lyrical confessions. In the first movement, for example, the piano begins with bare octaves on C, while the strings introduce the first theme, two sighing gestures of a descending minor second followed by a descending melodic line—a musical utterance of the name “Clara.”
Brahms wrote 24 chamber works in total, and two-thirds feature the piano—a testament to how deeply he relied on its expressive range and its dramatic interplay with the strings. Listeners can expect restless minor-key energy, a luminous central Andante that feels like a breath of warmth, and a finale that transforms turmoil into triumphant clarity. From the very first bars to its surprising conclusion, the quartet reveals Brahms’s unmistakably deliberate artistic design. This is Brahms at his most personal: richly scored, emotionally urgent, and endlessly compelling.
The first movement of Schubert’s String Trio in B-flat major is a joyous and welcoming work, highlighting how the three different string instruments’ timbres interweave and balance each other. Between the two 19th century European works, works by Caroline Shaw, Amy Beach, and Mark O’Connor demonstrate the inventiveness and creativity that has long been present in the field of classical chamber music here in the United States – including two composers (Shaw and O’Connor) who are still actively writing music today.
Caroline Shaw’s Limestone & Felt for viola and cello features a “whimsical, mystical, generous world of sound.” Amy Beach’s Romance for violin and piano brings the audience on an emotional and lyrical journey, from an early-20th-century female composer now receiving her due. Mark O’Connor’s Appalachia Waltz for the string trio incorporates O’Connor’s bluegrass roots into a heartfelt folk song.
MUSIC PROGRAM
*Selections from the Marshall Learning Center Bilingual Children’s Choir
Sérgio Mendes Mas Que Nada*
Miguel Ángel Hurtado Valicha*
Franz Schubert String Trio in B-flat major, D.471
Caroline Shaw Limestone & Felt
Amy Beach Romance for Violin and Piano, Op. 23
Mark O’Connor Appalachia Waltz
Johannes Brahm Piano Quartet No. 3 in C minor, Op. 60
Bruno Mars “Count On Me”*
Johannes Brahms “Guten Abend, Gute Nacht” *
Bilingual Marshall Choir
Christian Tremblay, ASO Principal Second Violin
Sarah Hart, ASO Principal Viola
Todd Thiel, ASO Principal Cello
Hsiao-Ying Lin, Piano
Enjoy FREE ice cream after the show, made possible by Storm Bros. Ice Cream Factory.
TICKETING
All tickets are $25. Please call our Box Office to learn about $10 student tickets, or military, law enforcement and first responder discounts that may be applied to this performance: 410-263-0907.
THANK YOU!
This performance is made possible in part with the support of the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC.org) and Arts Council of Anne Arundel County (ACAAC.org).