22march2026 Sunday 2pm Simon Finlow, piano virtuoso' WIPAC finalist & POTLUCK dinner buffet, music begins 3pm 99/50

The program begins with Enrique Granados's "Maiden and the Nightingale", which is one of his collection of "Goyescas", pieces inspired by the paintings of Goya. It is perhaps the best known of the set, with rich, expressive harmonies and some of the composer's most exquisite melodic lines. This is paired with the Allegro di concierto, Op. 46, perhaps Granados's most popular standalone work. It's a virtuosic showpiece with some quiet, expressive interludes, somewhat reminiscent of Liszt in its contrasting textures but deeply imprinted with Granados's inimitable Spanish idioms and sonorities.

Mozart's Sonata K. 545, sometimes referred to as "sonata semplice", is the next selection in the program. Anyone who has studied this work seriously, either from a performance or academic perspective, will know that it is not the "simple" trifle it's sometimes mistaken for. The first movement, Allegro, has an interesting and, for Mozart's time, highly unusual structure with what initially seems like a deceptive reprise in the subdominant key that eventually turns out to be the "real" recapitulation. Mozart uses this device as a way to incorporate additional development of his first-subject ideas before returning to the tonic for the second thematic group. The slow movement, Andante, might easily have been conceived as one of the Contessa's arias in Marriage of Figaro. The sublime, lyrical theme is unmistakably song-like, with some harmonic excursions into darker, parallel-minor territory and plenty of late-Mozartian chromaticism. The finale, Rondo: Allegretto, has operatic connotations of a different kind, this time feeling more like the standard "opera buffa" style of an aria that might have suited Figaro himself.

The second of Schubert's Drei Klavierstücke D. 946, in Eb, comprises the other Viennese work in the program. Composed in the last year of his life, the piece features one of the composer's most exquisite melodies, interspersed with contrasting sections, one of which takes us to the very distant keys of Ab minor and B minor.

The final work is "Danzas argentinas" by the Argentinian composer Alberto Ginastera, published in 1839. The three pieces in this collection are "Danza del viejo boyero", "Danza de la moza donosa", and "Danza del gaucho matrero". As one musicologist has asserted, "With its distinct Argentinian folk influences and dynamic piano textures, [Danzas] remains one of the most celebrated works in Latin American classical music."

A collage of Viennese Classical and post-Romantic Latin masterworks. Two well-known Mozart and Schubert pieces are sandwiched between Granados and Ginastera selections that include some of the most edifying Latin music of the 20th century.