The ensemble features Bulgarian violinist Yana Deshkova, a performer who is active on the international stage and currently serves as concertmaster of the Aalborg Symphony Orchestra in Denmark, French cellist Romain Garioud—a laureate of the Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Mstislav Rostropovich competitions, a graduate of the Paris Conservatory, and an active performer and teacher at international academies. Jurgis Juozapaitis – violist, chamber musician, and associate professor at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, Doctor of Arts; violinist Barbora Valiukevičiūtė-Žeižytė – an active concert performer and founder of the “Concerts for the Mayor” and “Mayor’s Academy in Merkinė” festivals. The clarinet, chosen as the thematic focus of the concert, will be introduced by guest Ayoze Rodriguez from Spain.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s four-movement Clarinet Quintet in A major is considered the first work of its kind and is universally recognized as a masterpiece of chamber music. The quintet was composed for W. A. Mozart’s friend and so-called lodge brother Anton Stadler, who also performed the premiere of the work. However, the original version was written for the basset clarinet, which is capable of playing a third lower than the standard instrument used today. After the basset clarinet fell out of favor in the early 19th century, the quintet was adapted for the clarinet in A.

In 1890, Johannes Brahms—who had not written a single new piece that year and was contemplating ending his career as a composer altogether—suddenly discovered a new source of inspiration. And that source was the chamber ensemble featuring the clarinet. Here, as in the case of W. A. Mozart, the intervention of an exceptional performer was indispensable. This time, it was the clarinetist Richard Mülfeld, who possessed a distinctive quality—a soft and delicate tone. Because of this quality, J. Brahms even gave the clarinetist the nickname “Miss Clarinet.” This determined a fundamental feature of Brahms’s Clarinet Quintet—its melodiousness and lyricism. At the beginning and in the final movement of the quintet, the composer highlights the distinctive sound of the diminished fourth interval. It is like a closed circle, about which the composer wrote in a letter to Clara Schumann: “One need only imagine a snake devouring its own tail… the story is over, the circle is closed.”In collaboration with the Kaunas State Philharmonic