Mahler Chamber Orchestra

Igor Stravinsky: Dumbarton Oaks

Although the music of Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) remained identifiably and originally his own throughout his career, nearly all of his works feature the unabashed imitation or even copying of various earlier creators. It was basically impossible to predict what the style and character of his next work would be; in the course of 70 years of working life, his idiom morphed into all sorts of guises from Russian Romanticism to modern dodecaphony and even to jazz. His most prolific and stylistically coherent period was his Neo-Classical period, which began after the First World War and lasted for nearly 30 years.

His principal work from this period, Dumbarton Oaks (1938), is an obvious tribute to the concerto grosso genre of the 18th century, particularly the Brandenburg Concertos of J.S. Bach. He wrote the piece for the 30th wedding anniversary of Robert Woods Bliss, a diplomat and art collector in the USA, and his wife Mildred Barnes Bliss. The original title of the work was Dumbarton Oaks 8-v-1938, after the homestead of the Bliss family and the date of the anniversary. Stravinsky was ill at the time, and the premiere was conducted by his friend Nadia Boulanger, but Stravinsky himself conducted the work twice thereafter, one occasion being the Blisses’ gold wedding anniversary in 1958.

Dumbarton Oaks is in three movements and emulates the enormous garden of the Bliss estate with its prolific meandering and strictly right-angled walks. In keeping with the spirit of Baroque concertos, each instrument gets its moment in the limelight across the movements that range from the upbeat first movement through the lilting second movement to the raucous finale.

W.A. Mozart: Clarinet Quintet in A major, KV 581

W.A. Mozart (1756–1791) had first used the clarinet in a couple of teenage divertimentos while on the road in Italy, but the instrument was not known, let alone played by anyone, in his home city of Salzburg. “I wish we had clarinets!” he wrote to his father from Mannheim in 1777. He first used the instrument in a symphony (No. 31) in Paris in the following year, but it was not until he became friends with Viennese clarinet virtuoso and fellow Freemason Anton Stadler that he thoroughly came to grips with it.

Intoxicated by the “humanlike” sound of the clarinet, Mozart wrote a Trio, a Quintet and a Concerto for Stadler, besides using the instrument for prominent solos in his Requiem and in his operas La clemenza di Tito and The Magic Flute. His Clarinet Quintet (1789) was not only the first work ever of its kind but also an important preliminary study for Mozart’s last instrumental work, the Clarinet Concerto (1791). The three-movement Quintet was originally written for the basset horn, the lower-pitched cousin of the clarinet, but today it is commonly performed on the A clarinet.

The coyly smiling mood of the piece, teetering on the edge of melancholy, may have been influenced by the really bad year that Mozart was having: heavy debt, death of a child, illness of his wife. Be that as it may, Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet inspired dozens of later composers from Weber to Brahms, who embraced the clarinet as a human voice in their chamber music.

Jaani Länsiö

Translation: Jaakko Mäntyjärvi

Fleur Barron 

Hailed by The Times as “a knockout performer,” mezzo-soprano Fleur Barron won the 2025 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for her portrayal of the title role in Kaija Saariaho’s Adriana Mater with the San Francisco Symphony under Esa-Pekka Salonen.

Recent highlights include her debut with the New York Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel in the world premiere of David Lang’s The Wealth of Nations and her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic under Kirill Petrenko in Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 at the Salzburg Easter Festival. In 2027, she appears with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande under Daniel Harding in Lili Boulanger’s Faust et Hélène.

Passionate about music’s power to foster cross-cultural dialogue, Barron curates inclusive chamber music programmes and regularly gives masterclasses at leading institutions in Europe, Asia and the United States. Born in Northern Ireland to a Singaporean mother and British father, she grew up in Hong Kong and later New York.