Werk: Septett Es-Dur, Op. 20

Early and late Beethoven in the closing two recitals of Wigmore Hall's Beethoven Festival Weekend. 

It is a well-known fact that Beethoven's Septet was one of his most popular works during his lifetime. What is lesser known is that Carl Czerny, his pupil, made a version for wind sextet.

A trio, quintet, and septet add up to an impressive range of emotional and timbral explorations in the concluding concert of Seattle's summer chamber music festival.

The musicians got on a bus to their next destination as the audience left the music hall. What had happened no longer was. Yet so much had changed after two Beethoven symphonies and Bruch’s violin concerto, all totems of the staple repertoire. In the hands of the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, they became almost as palpable as a drawing. The Academy is a perfectly balanced ecosystem.

Yo-Yo Ma, currently the Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, along with members from the same orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, took the stage at Symphony Center for a single night last Wednesday.