Piano quintets with Pietro de Maria

After performing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No.3 as part of the Russian Masters series presented at the Mediterranean Conference Centre last Saturday, Italian pianist Pietro de Maria will tomorrow be joining an MPO string quartet composed of violinists Emilia Wiśniewska, Philipp Orlov and Aiveen Gallagher and cellist Peter Flanagan for a concert featuring two of the most beautiful string quintets ever written. The first is the Piano Quintet in G minor by Shostakovich, which he wrote for the Beethoven Quartet he frequently collaborated with,  and who he joined at the piano for its premiere in 1940. The work was a great success, and it earned him the Stalin Prize the following year. The second is Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, which began life as a string quintet and then transcribed into a sonata for two pianos before Brahms made full use of both piano and strings in its final form. Brahms was so pleased with the final result that he destroyed the original string quintet, though the two-piano transcription survives. Originally planned for Robert Samut Hall, this concert is being held at San Anton Palace, Attard tomorrow at 7.30pm. Tickets may be obtained at...