A quintet of adjunct professors will carry its audience through three centuries of woodwind music at a 3 p.m. faculty recital Sunday in McNamara Rehearsal Hall.
The concert will feature Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op. 88 No. 2 by 18th-century composer Anton Reicha; Suite, Op. 57 by 19th-century composer Charles-Edouard Lefebvre; “Summer Music,” Op. 31 by 20th-century composer Samuel Barber; and “Kleine Kammermusik,” Op. 24 No. 2 by 20th-century composer Paul Hindemith.
“There’s lots of variety in this program,” Andrew Sprung, adjunct clarinet professor, said.
Sprung will be performing with Adjunct Professor Jaimie Wagner on flute, Adjunct Professor Kaycee Ware-Thomas on oboe, Adjunct Professor Cindy Duda-Pant on bassoon, and Adjunct Professor Alan Taplin on horn.
According to Sprung, no unifying theme ties the program’s four pieces together, but they are all “standards of the woodwind quintet repertoire.”
The woodwind family is a diverse group of instruments that is more rooted in history than in acoustic similarity. And unlike other instrumental families, the means of sound production is different for each instrument.
“It’s a much less homogeneous sound than you’re going to get with other chamber groups such as a string quartet or a brass quintet,” Sprung said.
Each piece featured on Sunday’s program takes advantage of the different sounds within the woodwind family to create more modern, dissonant harmonies, resulting in unique musical refrains. Unlike other musical families, woodwind quintets perform as five equal partners, each with a role in creating the melody.
“You’ll hear movements where everyone is a soloist,” Sprung said.
Sprung advised those attending the concert to listen to the canon in the concert’s opening movement, the Lefebvre piece. Each quintet member plays the same musical motif, giving it a unique sound every time.
“The quintet should be a lot of fun,” junior Conor Woodfin, who plays trumpet in the orchestra, said. “The virtuosity of our faculty is remarkable and this will be a chance to hear some great music that you probably will not find anywhere else.”
