This program looks at homage from two very different angles: one composer reaching backward across two centuries to reanimate a predecessor, the other inspired by a single extraordinary performer to write some of the most personal music of his career. Stravinsky's Pulcinella began as a commission to rework music then attributed to the eighteenth-century composer Pergolesi, and rather than simply orchestrate it, Stravinsky said he approached it "not with respect, but with love," layering his own harmonic wit and rhythmic surprise over Pergolesi's Baroque charm. The result launched an entirely new chapter in Stravinsky's career, neoclassicism, built on the idea that homage could be a genuine act of creation rather than mere imitation. Brahms's Clarinet Quintet tells a different kind of homage story. Having announced his retirement from composing in 1890, Brahms heard the clarinetist Richard Mühlfeld play and was so moved that he returned to the instrument, and to composing, producing this quintet as a tribute to Mühlfeld's artistry. What emerges is some of the most autumnal, deeply felt music Brahms ever wrote, proof that admiration for another artist, whether a composer three generations gone or a colleague in the next room, can be one of music's most powerful creative sparks.