2025-2026 Signature Series
Now in its twenty-sixth season, the Signature Series is Four Seasons’ flagship initiative. Comprising six sets of concerts throughout the year, the Signature Series features classical music’s preeminent performers and personalities in thrilling performance – in both Greenville and Raleigh!
The 2025-2026 Signature Series explores the enchantment of chamber music in all its many possibilities. From the transfigurative power of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen to the expressive vitality of Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet in A Major (and everything in between!), Ara has put together a season that showcases the awe-inspiring power of chamber music. Featuring an all-star cast of musicians performing beloved works by W.A. Mozart, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann, Rebecca Clarke, Ernő Dohnányi, Antonín Dvořák, Edward Elgar, Gabriel Fauré, César Franck, Dmitri Shostakovich, Bedřich Smetana, Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, and Hugo Wolf, this season is certain to astonish.
Metamorphosis
Raleigh – Sun, Sept 28 @ 3:00 PM
Written during the closing months of the Second World War, Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen serves as both an epitaph to all that was lost to the ravages of hatred and a profoundly personal meditation on the concept of metamorphosis. As he reflected on his artistic past from the vantage of what he knew to be his twilight years, Strauss conceived a work of powerful introspection and devastating emotion. One of the most impactful compositions of a career that spanned an incredible seven decades, Strauss’s Metamorphosen appears on our Signature Series itself metamorphosed into a version for string septet. Rounding out the program are two works similarly transfigured to the string sextet: Edward Elgar’s much-loved Serenade for Strings and W.A. Mozart’s equally captivating and profound Grande Sestetto Concertante, a work that features bravura playing from all members of the ensemble. Violinists Amy Schwartz Moretti and Xiao-Dong Wang, violists Ara Gregorian and Paul Neubauer, cellists Edward Arron and Marcy Rosen, and double bassist J. Christoper Buddo join forces for this transformative program.
Emotionalism
Raleigh – Sun, Nov 9 @ 3:00 PM
Join Four Seasons for an evening showcasing the drama, the passion, and the heartfelt emotion of chamber music. Robert Schumann’s effusive, mercurial sentimentality is on full display throughout his Piano Quintet in E-flat Major. Sometimes agitated, sometimes mournful, and frequently interspersed with moments of buoyant joy, this iconic work became the prototype of the Romantic Era piano quintet. A generation younger but no less a Romantic, Ernő Dohnányi demonstrates the emotive capabilities of chamber music in his Piano Quintet in E-flat Minor. Somber, elegant, and sometimes-tense, this moving work serves as a perfect counterpart to the exuberance of Schumann’s. Antonín Dvořák’s charming Sonatina for Violin and Piano – which he wrote for his young children – rounds out the program. Featuring pianist Rieko Aizawa, violinists Ara Gregorian and Jesse Mills, violist Yura Lee, and cellist Peter Stumph, this concert promises to be an emotional tour de force.
Discovery
Raleigh – Sun, Jan 18 @ 3:00 PM
Discover the sheer variety of chamber music in a program featuring works for an assortment of ensembles. The most-storied type of ensemble in all of chamber music – the string quartet – features prominently with Dmitri Shostakovich’s graceful, spring-inspired String Quartet No. 1 in C Major and Hugo Wolf’s delightful Italian Serenade. Complementing the classic configuration of the string quartet are two works for decidedly non-traditional groupings. Rebecca Clarke’s Prelude, Pastorale, and Allegro is a charming work for clarinet and viola that beautifully plays on the juxtaposition of the similar voice ranges and dissimilar sounds of the paired instruments. All five musicians close out the concert together with a performance of Johannes Brahms’s iconic Clarinet Quintet in B Minor, the work that brought Brahms out of retirement after a late-in-life enchantment with the clarinet. Discovery features clarinetist and audience favorite Alan Kay alongside violinists Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, violist Ara Gregorian, and cellist Ani Aznavoorian.
Echoes
Raleigh – Sun, Feb 15 @ 3:00 PM
The Cooperstown Quartet joins forces with pianist Robert McDonald in a concert featuring musical echoes. In his String Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, Franz Schubert repeatedly harkened back to his musical past, connecting this late work with quotations from several earlier compositions. The resulting quartet is hauntingly beautiful and filled to the brim with Schubert’s signature lyricism. The introspective Schubert is juxtaposed with the sheer ardor of César Franck’s Piano Quintet in F Minor, a work that features echoes not of other works but rather of itself. The beloved quintet, a startlingly passionate and intense work, is unified across its three movements by a theme, a then-novel innovation of which Franck was fond.
Remembrance
Raleigh – Sun, Mar 22 @ 3:00 PM
When Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky chose as the subtitle for his Piano Trio in A Minor the phrase, “in memory of a great artist,” he was doing more than offering a dedication to a recently deceased friend: he was engaging in the time-honored tradition of musical memorialization. The resulting work is a fitting tribute. By turns elegiac and rapturous, it features some of Tchaikovsky’s most inspired chamber music writing. Bedřich Smetana’s Piano Trio in G Minor remembers not the death of a friend, but of a child. Faced with unimaginable grief, Smetana poured his feelings into this work, a tragic and moving cornerstone of the repertoire. Pianist Adam Neiman, violinist Ara Gregorian, and cellist Zvi Plesser bring these trios to life on our stages, in the process remembering both their composers and the loved ones to whom they are dedicated.
Vitality
Raleigh – Sun, May 3 @ 3:00 PM
Our 2025-2026 Signature Series Season concludes with two works that display the joyful vitality of chamber music. Gabriel Fauré’s Piano Quartet No. 2 in G Minor is forceful, passionate, and energetic, an imposing work that’s sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. This most impassioned of Fauré’s works is paired with Johannes Brahms’s monumental Piano Quartet No. 2 in A Major. Sometimes lyrical, sometimes muscular, this largest of Brahms’s chamber works is colossal, dramatic, and vibrant. Join pianist Gilles Vonsattel, violinist Hye-Jin Kim, violist Ara Gregorian, and cellist Raman Ramakrishnan for this unforgettably thrilling season finale.
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