Sunday November 27
Amstelkerk
Amsterdam
Tickets

Fortunately, Beethoven's jubilee is being extended, because, for obvious reasons, nothing came of the Beethoven year 2020. The perfect opportunity to play his beautiful and little heard string quintet in C major. He wrote the piece in 1801 in Vienna. The beautiful string quintet is in no way inferior to his much better-known string quartets. Therefore, as an ambassador of the string quintet, this work belongs without any doubt at the top of Penta's repertoire list.

Also in 1801, over two thousand kilometers away, fellow composer and cello virtuoso Luigi Boccherini wrote his string quintet, also in C major. Quite a coincidence, but the differences couldn't be bigger. Working at the court outside Madrid, Boccherini lived quite isolated from European musical life. That perhaps explains his unique composing style. Where Beethoven was already looking ahead to the Romantic era, Boccherini was still very much connected to the Baroque.

It could be that Beethoven heard Boccherini's music five years earlier in 1796, when he visited the Prussian court of Friedrich Wilhelm II. That they met is highly unlikely. Boccherini was indeed engaged there at that time as a "compositeur de notre chambre," but from a distance. He regularly sent his compositions by post from Spain to the Prussian court.

With this concert, entirely in C major, the two composers finally meet, on stage, with Penta.

Program
L. Boccherini - Opus 60/1, in C major (1801)
L. von Beethoven - Opus 29, in C major (1801)