Culturally Inspired

Classical music may be the most extensive genre of music there is: there’s more of it, composed by more people, over more years, and from more lands and cultures than any other kind of music. Travel across the world in the space of an hour on this program. Begin the journey with Jean Francaix’s quintessentially French string trio, composed in 1933, then fly to America in 1986 to find pianist, composer, mathematician, and Hebrew scholar Paul Schoenfield re-imagining the clarinet trio with music that would be appropriate for Chassidic gatherings as well as the concert hall. And finally, catapult back to Western Europe all the way to the northern Caucasus Mountains, to find Sergei Prokofiev — evacuated from Moscow because of the war in 1941, and his zesty string quartet based on local Kabardinian folk tunes.