Lakes Area Music Festival - Songs Without Words

Pianist Audrey Vardanaga joins strings from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra bringing music from the Romantic period, including Amy Beach's stunning Piano Quintet.

Curator of this program, Vardanaga explains:

“When choosing the pieces for this program, I was thinking about Amy Beach’s deeply romantic voice and how it relates so naturally with the easeful melodies of Felix Mendelssohn’s Songs without Words, Sergei Rachmaninoff’s lush harmonies from his Cello Sonata in G Minor, and Clara Schumann’s whimsical 3 Romances.

Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann preceded Amy Beach, paving the way for the tonal worlds of the 20th Century Romantics (like Rachmaninoff and Beach). Sergei Rachmaninoff and Amy Beach were contemporaries, and I find that their music pairs together well. Since they were both pianists, Rachmaninoff and Beach were not only incredibly romantic in their compositional styles, but also both deeply…