This weekend the Ives Quartet is playing a quintet, the Brahms F-Minor Piano Quintet to be exact. But what's really exciting is that pianist Gwendolyn Mok is going to play (as she played Ravel last year), on her 19th-century piano, an Erard, the Paris firm that was one of the most highly regarded instrument makers in Europe.
That may not enable her to push to the front against modern string instruments, the way that Brahms could, but the timbre of the older instrument definitely allows for new colors and balances.
The Ives' are also offering a quartet by Erwin Schulhoff, whose music they have championed. Schulhoff's style in the 1920s was a mix of modernist ideas ranging from neoclassicism to the jazz and ragtime-derived music that was so hip in Weimar-period Germany. Old Papa Haydn also makes an appearance on this program, which is one for connoisseurs to savor.