Festival Nears Final Measures

Aug 7, 10:47 PM

The Pacifica Quartet completed their debut residency at Music@Menlo on Friday night with the Final Quartets of Felix Mendelssohn. In addition to the season honoree’s Opuses 80 and 81, the Pacificas added the third movement Romanze from the String Quartet in E-flat Major of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (Felix’s sister and a similarly accomplished composer) to open the second half. As an encore, the Quartet offered the Cavatina of Beethoven’s Opus 130 String Quartet as a tribute to Michael Steinberg.

The 2009 festival season finishes with a loud hurrah on Saturday as Music@Menlo offers a compelling trio of concerts. In the afternoon, the students of the Chamber Music Institute give the summer’s final Koret Young Performers Program, a smorgasbord of chamber music masterpieces from the Classical period to the twentieth century (1:00 p.m., Martin Family Hall). The exceptional young artists of the International Program follow with their valedictory Prelude Performance, featuring Max Bruch’s Opus 83 Pieces for clarinet trio and Mendelssohn’s Andante and Allegro Brillant for four-hand piano and the triumphant Opus 20 Octet (5:00 p.m. Martin Family Hall).

“Being Mendelssohn” ends with an historic performance: following the conclusion of his remarkable 53-year run as founding pianist of the Beaux Arts Trio, Menahem Pressler performs the Mendelssohn Piano Trios with two new colleagues, violinist Eugene Drucker and cellist and festival artistic director David Finckel, both members of the renowned Emerson String Quartet. The season’s concluding concert program, “Promise Fulfilled,” also includes Schubert’s Violin Sonata in A Major, composed when the Viennese master was only 20 years old (8:00 p.m., Menlo Park Presbyterian Church).