Mit Feuer

Jul 30, 12:07 AM

Music@Menlo’s jaunt through Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream music came to a splendid cadence on Wednesday night. The International Program artists began the evening with a Prelude Performance of works from the Romantic period, including an impassioned reading of Brahms’s Clarinet Trio, refined earlier in the day with cellist Paul Watkins at the afternoon master class. With the fluid virtuosity of violinist Arnaud Sussmann leading the way, a dynamic cast of winds and strings brought Louis Spohr’s kaleidoscopic Nonet to life, riveting a capacity St. Mark’s Episcopal Church audience.

In between performances of Schumann’s D minor Piano Trio and the complete Brahms Violin Sonatas (Carte Blanche Concert II: Saturday, 8:00 p.m., St. Mark’s Episcopal Church), the erudite pianist Jeffrey Kahane leads Thursday’s Cafė Conversation, “Odysseus, Prometheus, and Beethoven: The Mythological Sources of the Eroica Symphony and Other Musical Masterworks of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries” (12:00 p.m., Martin Family Hall).