Öland Chamber Players concludes its festival with a celebratory programme at Anna’s Farm, pairing two works of irresistible warmth and invention. Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A major, D. 667, known universally as the Trout Quintet, is one of the most beloved works in the chamber music repertoire. Composed in 1819 during a summer stay in the Austrian town of Steyr, it reflects the ease and high spirits of that period in the composer’s life. Its five movements include a set of variations on Schubert’s own song Die Forelle (The Trout), from which the work takes its nickname. The scoring for piano, violin, viola, cello and double bass lends the quintet a distinctive, luminous quality quite unlike any other ensemble combination.

Mikhail Glinka’s Grand Sextet in E-flat major for piano and string quintet, composed in 1832, is a work that deserves to be far better known. Written during Glinka’s formative years in Italy, it shows the young composer absorbing the influences of Italian opera and Viennese classicism while already displaying the melodic gift that would later distinguish him as the founding figure of the Russian national school. Energetic, inventive and thoroughly enjoyable, it brings the festival to a close in the most fitting of spirits.