Ciompi Concert No. 3 featuring Nicholas Kitchen, Viola & Yeesun Kim, Cello

Local favorites Nicholas Kitchen, viola, and Yeesun Kim, cello, both of the Borromeo String Quartet, join the Ciompi for an evening of sextets. The concert begins with the premiere of Kitchen’s transcription for string sextet of Bach’s magisterial Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major, BWV 552 (“St. Anne”), one of the composer’s greatest works for organ. Baroque contemplation turns to modern tumult with Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, op. 68, a work written and premiered in the midst of World War II, expressing the composer’s deeply personal response to the turmoil around him. In the evening’s stirring finale, Kitchen and Kim return for Brahms’ Sextet in G Major, op. 36, a passionate composition concealing the composer’s infatuation with singer Agathe von Siebold.