The 2023 Robert Mann Chamber Series continues with the “wonderful, selfless music-making” (The Times, London) of the Brentano String Quartet, Ensemble-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music. The program opens with Mozart’s intriguing “Hoffmeister” String Quartet, a chamber gem of character and complexity. Two touching memorial pieces by James MacMillan follow: his brief and delicate Memento and the miniature For Sonny, rife with pizzicato nursery rhymes and harmonies of shifting tones, composed to honor the memory of a friend’s grandson. It is fitting that Brentano ends their performance with one of the last and most profound pieces by Beethoven, since the Quartet takes its name from arts patron Antonie Brentano, believed to have been Beethoven’s mysterious “Immortal Beloved.”

The Robert Mann Chamber Music Series continues by highlighting musicians from the Festival’s own ranks. Britten’s Phantasy Quartet begins with a march and proceeds with lively pastoral charm. Poulenc is a composer known for his aesthetic of irrepressible good humor; he called his jaunty but complex Sextet “an homage to the wind instruments I have loved from the moment I began composing.” Brahms’ sophisticated Second String Sextet is rich with nostalgia, but sweeps all sadness away in its warm, bright finale.

The final concert of the 2023 Robert Mann Chamber Music Series highlights the Festival’s own musicians. Though it was composed on the early side of his career, Beethoven’s energetic String Trio in C Minor gives a decisive glimpse into the intensity of expression the composer would eventually be renowned for. In Debussy’s sparkling Danses — commissioned to showcase the rich capabilities of the harp — his first dance explores the ethereal (the “sacred”) and gradually becomes a swirling, earthly waltz (the “profane,” or secular). Dvořák composed his famous Second Piano Quintet during a happy period in his life; that contentment shines through in this treasured jewel of chamber repertoire.

The 2024 Robert Mann Chamber Music Series begins with a spotlight on the Festival’s own musicians. Dohnányi’s sextet brings together piano, string trio, clarinet, and horn, an uncommon combination which the composer uses to mischievous effect. Beethoven’s brief “Eyeglasses Duo” is so called for a friendly note between colleagues — both Beethoven and his cellist friend Nikolaus Zmeskall required spectacles — and its music is similarly conversational and good-humored. Schumann embedded some of his most aching and romantic music into his Piano Quartet, a chamber gem of contrast and delight.

The Robert Mann Chamber Music Series continues by highlighting musicians from the Festival’s own ranks. One of the most beloved works ever written for wind quintet is this music by Carl Nielsen; he composed his Wind Quintet with five friends in mind, and this warmth, as well as the personality of each instrument, shines through. Schubert’s sublime and romantic C major String Quartet is regarded as one of the greatest string quartets of any era.

The Robert Mann Chamber Music Series continues with a spotlight on the Festival’s own musicians. Haydn’s String Quartets achieved a new range of expression for secular music; his String Quartet C major, Op. 20, No. 2 is a diamond from start to finish. Debussy, a master of impressionism and fantasy, creates a quintessential dreamscape in his Sonata for Flute, Harp, and Viola. Instead of treating his string octet as two individual quartets, Mendelssohn’s innovative Octet finds all eight musicians working tightly together in, as the composer requested, “symphonic orchestral style.”

“Yes, playing string quartets is our job, and yes it is hard work, but we mostly do it for pleasure, like we always did,” says the Danish String Quartet, a highly sought-after ensemble of energetic musicians who met each other at music camp as teenagers. The Quartet returns to the Robert Mann Chamber Music Series with a varied program including work by Haydn, Stravinsky, and Mozart, as well as Shostakovich’s profound String Quartet No. 3 and three Irish folk melodies by Celtic harper and composer Turlough O’Carolan.