What do a sixteen-year-old Gustav Mahler, a thirteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn, and today's musicians have in common? Everything! This program is an ode to the eternal new and blurs the boundaries of time and age.

Unfinished, lost, and rediscovered by widow Alma Mahler among Gustav's legacy papers, the Piano Quartet is the only surviving piece of chamber music by this grandmaster. While we now know Mahler from his grand symphonies, here we hear the intimate, raw seed of his genius.

In the 19th century, the string trio fell out of fashion, until Dohnányi, “The Hungarian Brahms,” breathed new life into the genre and at the same time gave a contemporary impulse to the 18th-century serenade form. What a masterstroke!

We conclude with the thirteen-year-old (!) Felix Mendelssohn. Although he had already written piles of music by then, he chose this quartet as his official Opus 1; his statement to the world in which he no longer presents himself as a child prodigy, but as a fully-fledged composer.

Good music transcends time and always remains “new” for those who hear it. The same applies to tonight's musicians. Two rising teenage talents and two inspired luminaries, united in passion and boundless urge for discovery, are living proof that age plays no role when it comes to talent and mastery.