Performed by Toledo Symphony Chamber Musicians on October 4, 2026

Guitar Quintet No. 4 in D Major, G. 448 “Fandango” 

Luigi Boccherini (1743–1805) 

Born in Lucca, Italian composer Luigi Boccherini was a virtuoso cellist. He began his musical career as a child and quickly excelled. He began performing across Europe before eventually settling in Spain. He later lived in Prussia for a time, but then returned to Spain, where he spent his final years in poverty.  

Boccherini wrote an astonishing amount of music, especially chamber music. His catalog includes more than fifty string trios, almost a hundred string quartets and quintets (he contributed more music to the string quintet genre than any other composer), thirty cello sonatas, and forty orchestral works.  

After returning to Spain from Prussia, Boccherini struggled to make a living and sometimes repurposed parts of his earlier works to create new compositions. Though this was financially necessary for him, it was also not an uncommon practice at the time. His Guitar Quintet in D Major uses music from the String Quintets G. 270 (1771) and G. 341 (1788). The piece was commissioned by the Marquis Benavente, a guitar enthusiast and patron of the arts, who commissioned other works from Boccherini as well.  

Stylistically, Boccherini’s works are charming, melodic, and generally uncomplicated. He prioritized texture over thematic development and was a great admirer of Haydn’s music.  

The opening Pastorale is gentle and lilting, and the strings play muted. The second movement is a more extroverted Allegro that features the cello in higher registers using harmonics and glissandi. The third movement begins with a slow, serious introduction, then moves directly into the Fandango, a rhythmic Spanish dance in triple meter. Boccherini includes optional castanets.  

Octet for Wind Instruments 
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) 

Igor Stravinsky is one of the most significant composers of the twentieth century and is responsible for several developments in composition. He broke with the ideal of German Romanticism in favor of a more polytonal approach to harmony and melody. He also moved toward a more urgent sense of rhythm, and he had a strong interest in American jazz. Beginning in the 1920s, Stravinsky composed in a style called neoclassicism, looking to eighteenth century Classical and Baroque music for inspiration in creating a sparer, clearer, and more balanced style of music. Stravinsky hated the term “neoclassical,” calling it “[a] much-abused expression meaning absolutely nothing.” 

Stravinsky composed his Octet for Wind Instruments in 1922–23, explaining, “The octet began with a dream, in which I saw myself in a small room surrounded by a small group of instrumentalists playing some attractive music ... I awoke from this little concert in a state of great delight and anticipation, and the next morning began to compose.” This octet is one of Stravinsky’s earliest works in the neoclassical style. Annotator Stephen Walsh writes, “It belongs to a group of works that reject both the emotional ostentation of pre-World War I Romanticism and the folklore basis of his own work from the previous decade, in favor of a cool, objective manner that seems to refer to the forms and idioms of earlier Western music.”  

Stravinsky’s Octet is in three movements and follows the basic Classical concerto form (fast-slow-fast). The instrumentation may be a nod to Mozart’s divertimenti. Stravinsky completed part of the work at his home in Biarritz, where he lived with his family, and he finished it in his studio in Paris.  

The opening Sinfonia has a slow introduction that leads into the Allegro moderato. The middle movement is a theme and variations and is Stravinsky’s first piece in that form. It includes a little waltz from which the main theme is pulled based on an octatonic scale. Stravinsky explains, “I recognized [the waltz theme] as an ideal theme for variations. I then wrote the rubans des gammes (ribbons of scales) variation as a prelude introduction to each of the other variations.” The rondoesque finale is partly inspired by Bach’s keyboard Inventions mixed with jazz.  

Stravinsky’s Octet premiered in 1923 on the stage of the Paris Opera House. Perhaps worried about a repeat of the unsatisfactory premiere of his Symphonies of Wind Instruments as it was conducted by Serge Koussevitzky, who took too many liberties, Stravinsky conducted the premiere himself. In an article for the Brooklyn journal The Arts, he further explained that the Octet leaves no room for interpretation. “All the players have to do is play exactly what is written. [I chose wind instruments] in order to render a certain rigidity of the form I had in mind ... because the difference in the volume of these instruments renders more evident the musical architecture.” Walsh points out that this idea of there being no room for interpretation is “clearly an abstract [one] ... because musical notation is imprecise and performing musicians are human beings.”  

According to the poet and playwright Jean Cocteau who attended the premiere, the first audience received the Octet with a “scandal du silence.” Stravinsky’s shift from the deep ethnic roots of Les Noces to the more austere neoclassical world must have been confusing and surprising. Aaron Copland was also in the audience. He wrote about “[the] general feeling of mystification that followed the initial hearing. Everyone was asking why Stravinsky should have exchanged his Russian heritage and the neoprimitive style that was all his own for what looked very much like a mess of eighteenth-century mannerisms. The whole thing gained Stravinsky unanimous disapproval in the press. No one could have possibly foreseen, first, that Stravinsky was to persist in this new manner of composition, or second, that the Octet was destined to influence composers all over the world in bringing the latent objectivity of modern music to full consciousness by frankly adopting the ideals, forms, and textures of the pre-Romantic era.”  

String Quartet No. 16 in E-Flat Major, K. 428 
A. Mozart (1756–1791)

Mozart wrote a staggering amount of music during his lifetime, making significant contributions to most musical genres in a total of over six hundred works. In the 1780s, confronted by fewer performance opportunities, he focused on chamber music. Needless to say, his chamber works were extremely popular.  

In 1781, Joseph Haydn published his set of String Quartets, Op. 33. With these quartets, Haydn established a new standard for the genre: the four voices became equals in the musical conversation rather than continuing with the earlier precedent of a quartet meaning first violin plus accompaniment. This equality among the voices, along with other points, greatly inspired Mozart, who composed his own set of six quartets in 1782–1785. He dedicated them to Haydn: “Behold here, famous man and dearest friend, my six children. They are, to be sure, the fruit of long and arduous work, yet some friends have encouraged me to assume that I shall see this work rewarded to some extent at least, and this flatters me into believing that these children shall one day offer me some comfort. You yourself, dearest friend, have shown me your approval of them during your last sojourn in this capital.”  

Greatly impressed by Mozart’s “Haydn” Quartets, Haydn famously remarked to Mozart’s father, Leopold, “Before God, and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me either in person or by name. He has taste, and, what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition.”  

The manuscript of Mozart’s String Quartet in E-flat isn’t marked with a date, so the exact time of its composition is unknown. Renowned Mozart scholar Alfred Einstein estimates that it was composed in June or July 1783, though later research suggests it might have been as late as January of the following year.  

Mozart’s E-flat Quartet is lyrical and warm. The first movement is in sonata form with wonderfully inventive themes, and the second features long, singing melodies underpinned by chromaticism. The Menuetto is rustic and sweet in its use of drones and perfect fifths, and contrasts well with its accompanying trio, which is more introverted. The finale begins with an initial hesitation, then takes off running with mischievous playful rhythms.