Béa Bartók, Joseph Szigeti, and Benny Goodman playing Contrasts at Carnegie Hall in New York, 1940. © A. Dagli Orti/De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images
Béa Bartók, Joseph Szigeti, and Benny Goodman playing Contrasts at Carnegie Hall in New York, 1940. © A. Dagli Orti/De Agostini Picture Library/Bridgeman Images
Largely by Haydn’s hand, the Classical era saw a newly innovative approach to instrumental writing. In the chamber music of the eighteenth century, wind instruments and their distinct timbres took on new expressive significance. The divertimenti and serenades of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven would foreshadow the colorful audacity of later generations of composers. Taking Haydn’s Divertimento à 6 as a point of departure, Concert Program V brings audiences into the twentieth century with Béla Barték’s Contrasts, composed in 1938 for the jazz clarinetist Benny Goodman.