Discovery hosted by Four Seasons Chamber Music Festival

• Presented By ECU A. J. Fletcher Music Center
• Dates January 16, 2026
• Time 7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

Discover the sheer variety of chamber music in a program featuring works for an assortment of ensembles. The most-storied type of ensemble in all of chamber music – the string quartet – features prominently with Dmitri Shostakovich’s graceful, spring-inspired String Quartet No. 1 in C Major and Hugo Wolf’s delightful Italian Serenade. Complementing the classic configuration of the string quartet are two works for decidedly non-traditional groupings. Rebecca Clarke’s Prelude, Pastorale, and Allegro is a charming work for clarinet and viola that beautifully plays on the juxtaposition of the similar voice ranges and dissimilar sounds of the paired instruments. All five musicians close out the concert together with a performance of Johannes Brahms’s iconic Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, the work that brought Brahms out of retirement after a late-in-life enchantment with the clarinet. Discovery features clarinetist and audience favorite Alan Kay alongside violinists Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, violist Ara Gregorian, and cellist Ani Aznavoorian.