Quality chamber music is permeated with cosiness, in the best sense of the word. Of course, none of this is a coincidence at all, for even though the genre first emerged in the 17th century with small ensembles originally performing in aristocratic salons, it was not long before communal music-making found its way to bourgeois households. What is essential for the playing of chamber music, popular nowadays among concert hall audiences, is for the musicians to pay close attention to each other and for each of the instruments involved to come into focus. Johann Sebastian Bach's The Art of the Fugue, a massive cycle by the apostle of Baroque music, is the pinnacle of structuring counterpoint. The seventh "contrapunctus" employs both diminished (double speed) and augmented (half-speed) versions of the original theme. Béla Bartók's piano cycle Out of Doors dates from two hundred years later. The most frequently played movement of the suite consists of memorable nature music that sounds as if the outside world - sometimes calm and sometimes threatening - were coming to life on the keys of the piano. Mozart was supposedly out bowling when he composed his "Kegelstatt" trio, a piece for clarinet, viola and piano that was originally written to be played in the home. Our guides in this journey across musical eras and pieces, as well as ratios and variations, will be Zsolt Körmendy, the curator of the series, and pianist Balázs Fülei, the head of the chamber music department at the Liszt Academy.

Age: 10-14 year

Presented by: Müpa Budapest