Beyond Mozart and Haydn: rare Galant piano music with guest violin, heard almost nowhere else. Limited seating.

This program centers on a strand of 18th-century music that rarely reaches today’s concert stage: works written in the decades between late Baroque rhetoric and high Classical form. The Galant and transitional styles heard here favor clarity of line, sudden shifts of mood, asymmetry, and a direct, almost conversational relationship with the listener—qualities later absorbed and regularized by Mozart and Haydn.

Pianist-composer Nate Sassoon performs keyboard works by G.A. Benda, C.P.E. Bach, W.F. Bach, and Carl Maria von Weber, composers whose music exploits the expressive resources of the early fortepiano through flexible tempo, sharp dynamic contrasts, and a vocal approach to melody. Compact in scale yet structurally adventurous, these pieces reward close listening without reliance on familiar Classical formulas.

The program also includes solo violin works, reflecting the intimate scale and rhetorical character of mid-18th-century chamber music. Marienn Sanchez, violin, Monterrey, Mexico is joining Nate in two duets and also performing solo works.

Set alongside the historical repertoire are new works by Sassoon, written in dialogue with Galant syntax and gesture, treating the style as a functional musical language rather than a historical artifact.

A program for listeners interested in hearing the Classical era from the inside out. Limited seating.(Eastern Time) RECEPTION WITH WINE AND CHEESE AFTERWARDS