The Music

Like 2025’s Gran Partita, 2026’s ’Serenades’ concert harks back to the genre of ‘Harmoniemusik’: a style unique to the wind ensemble, which refers to the group of players employed by courts and grand houses to provide entertainment for dinners, garden parties, and other social occasions.

Usually performed outside, these pieces often referenced popular dances and tunes from celebrated operas of the day. Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for wind instruments in D minor can perhaps be viewed as an homage to the ‘Harmoniemusik' of the late eighteenth century, though singing in a distinctly Czech accent. The piece marries classical poise with the rhythmic vitality and modal inflections of Bohemian folk music: expect a dignified march, graceful minuet, lyrical andante, before a furiously exuberant finale.

We pair this with Harmoniemusik selections from The Marriage of Figaro, arranged by Johann Wendt, a Czech oboist and contemporary of Mozart’s. Indeed, Czech wind players were especially renowned in Mozart’s day, and the virtuosity of this arrangement (which includes all the opera’s most familiar melodies) confirms just how skilful they must have been.