George Onslow: String Quartet in A major, Op. 8 no. 3
John Frederick Peter: Quintet no. 1 for Strings in D major
Franz Joseph Haydn: String Quartet in A major, Op. 20 no. 6
In “A Time and Place,” La Speranza challenges the presupposition that modern-day Austria and Germany were the only game in town when it came to chamber music composition and publication in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. By pairing works written and published elsewhere – the whimsical String Quartet in A major by George Onslow, a wealthy contemporary of Beethoven who published in Paris, France, with John Frederick Peter’s jovial String Quintet in D major, written in 1789 in Salem, North Carolina – we shine a light into forgotten corners of musical composition, honoring the history of music in the United States for its semiquincentennial in the process. Haydn’s sparkling String Quartet in A major, Op. 20, No. 6, completes the program.
