‘Autumn Thoughts’ is the title of the Rudolf Kempe Society’s last offering in this year’s Songs of Apollo series of word and music.

Given on Sunday 28 November at 5.00pm in the Kempe Studio at The Muses, 58 Waterside, the programme features two works of chamber music by composers who, though writing some 100 years apart, were both late in their lives inspired by the same idea of entrusting their very personal thoughts to a rare set-up of instruments: the string quartet joined – and led – by the clarinet, that wood wind instrument regarded to be closest to the human voice in its powers of expression.

Mozart, in whose time the clarinet had only just been developed as a newcomer to orchestral instruments, was greatly taken in by the playing of Anton Stadler, the foremost clarinettist of the late 18th century, and devoted his late Quintet in A major K 581 to him, whilst Brahms, who had already more or less given up composing, was lured out of retirement by Richard Mühlfeld, solo clarinettist of the famous Meiningen Court Chapel, to create one of his greatest works, the Quintet in b minor opus 115.

Both works reflect the unique artistry of the two composers and their interpreters. They will be performed by the RSC’s longstanding clarinettist Edward Watson with the members of the Bergonzi Quartet, Cordula Kempe and Emily Chaplais, violins, Neil Clarke, viola and Peter Wilson, cello.

Interweaving the melancholy as well as the serenity of these autumnal sounds of music will be classical and contemporary poetry on the subject of autumn - in nature, life and art – chosen by Cordula Kempe and read by one of the RSC’s founder members, actor Clifford Rose.

Tickets are available from the Civic Hall Box Office Stratford-upon-Avon, phone 01789 – 207 100, and online www.rudolfkempesociety.org.

Please note the ‘autumnal’ starting time of 5.00pm.