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Chamber Music for Winds

with guest pianist David Anderegg

April 25, 2026

PROGRAM

Schumann, Fantasy Pieces for Clarinet and Piano

Saint-Saens, Sonata for Oboe and Piano

Poulenc, Sonata for Flute and Piano

Mozart, Quintet for Piano and Winds K452 (Oboe, Clarinet, Horn, Bassoon, Piano)

Showcasing the expressive beauty and elegance of individual wind instruments with piano accompaniment, the performance offers a richly varied chamber program that ranges from romantic to playful to refined.

The program opens with Schumann’s Fantasy Pieces for Clarinet and Piano, a set of deeply expressive miniatures that reveal the clarinet’s lyrical soul. Camille Saint-Saëns’s Sonata for Oboe and Piano follows, offering elegance and poignant reflection in one of the composer’s final works.

The program continues with Francis Poulenc’s delightful Sonata for Flute and Piano, a work full of wit, charm, and unexpected emotional depth. The performance culminates in Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds K.452, a radiant masterpiece that brings together oboe, clarinet, horn, bassoon, and piano in a vibrant and conversational ensemble.

Program Notes

David Anderegg

Robert Schumann (1810-1856) wrote his Fantasy-Pieces, Opus 73, for clarinet and piano, but also indicated they could be played on the cello or violin. They have become an important part of the cello repertoire, as well as a cornerstone of clarinet music. He wrote these pieces, originally called “Night-Pieces” over the course of two days during a happy and productive period in his troubled life. The name “Fantasy-Pieces” indicated, for Schumann, pieces characterized by rapidly shifting and intense emotional states. The last movement, with the beginning tempo marking “quick and fiery,” is classic Schumann: in the coda, he tells the musicians to play “Schneller” (faster) and then “Schneller” again. This is only slightly less insane than the first movement of his g-minor piano sonata, which begins with the tempo marking “as fast as possible” and then adds two more “Schnellers” before the ending.

Charles-Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921) was well-known as the most talented child prodigy in the history of Western music, surpassing even Mozart: in his debut public piano recital at the age of ten, he offered to play, as an encore, any of the 32 Beethoven piano sonatas from memory. Saint-Saens wrote all kinds of music: symphonies, concertos, opera, and chamber music. He lived a long life, and in his later years, he was seen as a once-beloved, but reactionary figure. His traditional Romantic approach to music did not age well in the era of Stravinsky and Schonberg; in 1919, he said of Darius Milhaud’s polytonal symphonic suite Protée, "fortunately, there are still lunatic asylums in France". The oboe sonata dates from 1921, the last year of his life: he undertook a project to augment the repertoire for wind instruments who had traditionally been neglected in the chamber repertoire. The oboe sonata alternates between lyricism and virtuosity, and is a beloved work for which all oboists are grateful. Shortly after completing it, Saint-Saens died in Algiers at the age of 86.

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) wrote his famous flute sonata upon receiving a commission from the US Library of Congress, which commissioned many of the great works of 20th-century chamber music through a grant from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, to whose memory this work is dedicated. (Coolidge is locally famous as the benefactor who built the South Mountain chamber music hall on her estate in Pittsfield in 1918). The first movement, marked “malinconico” or melancholy, and the second, Cantilena, movement are elegiac in nature, but the third is bumptious and playful, almost a can-can in spirit. It is as if Poulenc is grieving, but then laughing in the face of grief, as he so often did throughout his musical career. The piece was a great success at its premiere in 1956 and has been ever since.

The eminent Mozart biographer, Wolfgang Hildesheimer, wrote the following passage in 1977: “Mozart’s creativity reached a high point both qualitatively and quantitatively in the four years from the beginning of 1784 to the end of 1787. In this period he wrote twelve piano concerti; a horn concerto; a symphony; five quintets for various combinations of instruments, among them the (quintet) for piano, oboe, clarinet, horn and bassoon, which he himself, at least at the time of its composition, held to be the best work he ever wrote. It is indeed unique…Each instrument is presented in its deepest individuality; each performs like a virtuoso soloist and at the same time in a cantabile fashion, sometimes playing only one figuration, and then passing it along to the next instrument, which picks it up in a version appropriate to it. It is as if the woodwind sound were dictating the melodic lines.”

MUSICIANS

Cathy Mohn, Flute was principal flute for the Chapel Hill Philharmonia. She played piccolo for the Triangle Wind Ensemble and has played in chamber orchestras for the Berkshire Community Choir and the Berkshire Children’s Choir. Cathy is currently co-principal flutist in the Stockbridge Sinfonia and plays oboe with the Eagles Community Band.

Julie Martin, Oboe played in the Omaha and Alabama Symphonies, freelanced in the Boston area, and now plays in the Stockbridge Sinfonia and the Eagles Community Band.

Lyndon Moors, Clarinet is a very active musician, playing multiple woodwinds in the Eagles Band, Barrington Stage Company productions, and with The Valley Winds. He has played oboe with the Berkshire and Albany Symphonies and was principal oboe of the Bangor Symphony. Lyndon retired from the Mt. Greylock Regional School District in Williamstown after thirty-five years as a band director. 

Stewart Edelstein, Horn graduated from the Preparatory Department of the Eastman School of Music, after which he pursued his French horn studies at Oberlin College. He was a founding member of Prevailing Winds of Connecticut, a woodwind quintet, which concertized for more than thirty years. He has performed with the Stockbridge Sinfonia and local chamber groups.

Gerold Mohn, Bassoon, Clarinet has performed with the North Carolina Wind Orchestra, the Raleigh Civic Symphony and Chamber Orchestra, and was a founding member of the Triangle Wind Ensemble. He plays bassoon in the Eagles Community Band and clarinet in the Stockbridge Sinfonia. He also serves as principal clarinetist of the Holyoke Civic Symphony.

David Anderegg, Piano, is an accomplished musician with a diverse background in performance, composition, and collaboration. Anderegg began his musical career as a rehearsal pianist for ballet and modern dance companies in the Boston area. Alongside his professional work in psychology, he has remained active as a chamber and solo pianist, including performing with the Anderegg Trio alongside his children. A founding member of the Mutevoli Ensemble, he first performed Mozart’s Quintet for Piano and Winds over forty years ago.

As a composer and arranger, Anderegg’s works include psalm settings, Christmas carols, popular songs, and two chamber operas, What Owls Do and The Beasts. His recent compositions include Songs from a Bad Year, inspired by the pandemic, Two Vocalizes for Enrique, and the music theater piece A Bigger Angel. He is currently working on a larger theatrical work titled King Toot.