Tabea Zimmermann, Jean-Guihen Queyras, Javier Perianes

Inspired Friendships - As the leading violist of her generation and a formative teacher, Tabea Zimmermann knows from experience the binding power of making music together. The viola itself often takes on a mediating role in chamber music: balancing, dialogic, sustaining. Audiences can expect just that kind of harmony when Zimmermann joins artistic companions Jean-Guihen Queyras and Javier Perianes to form a trio of the highest calibre. The programme celebrates the sparks that fly when musically exceptional personalities meet.

The celebrated Clara Schumann performed with Joseph Joachim - twelve years her junior - more than with anyone else. Together on stage from 1843, their relationship deepened into friendship around 1853 - the very year Joachim introduced the Schumanns to an exciting young pianist named Johannes Brahms.

The friendship of these four remarkable figures lasted a lifetime and left its mark on numerous compositions: among them Joachim's "Hebrew Melodies" dedicated to Brahms, and Clara Schumann's "Three Romances", which Joachim annotated with bowing and phrasing marks before publication. Brahms, too, was sustained by friendship throughout his life - whether through the vocal artistry of Joachim's wife Amalie, or through the Meiningen clarinettist Richard Mühlfeld, who inspired late masterworks such as the Clarinet Trio, also authorised by Brahms for viola.

Programme:
Schumann, Fantasiestücke op. 73
Clara Schumann, Three Romances op. 22
Joachim, Hebrew Melodies op. 9
Brahms, Four Ballads and Romances op. 75
Brahms, Three Intermezzi op. 117
Kurtág, Excerpts from "Signs, Games and Messages"
Brahms, Clarinet Trio op. 114 (arr. Brahms for viola, cello and piano)

Performers:
Tabea Zimmermann - viola
Jean-Guihen Queyras - cello
Javier Perianes - piano