At Clos Pegase Winery in Calistoga, the Music in the Vineyards husband-and-wife team of Michael and Daria Adams have put together a program that begins quite classically. The “Kakadu” Variations for piano trio is yet another in a long list of Beethoven standards. But then comes The Voice of the Whale by George Crumb.
This strangely liberating music, conceived as another of the composer's games with timbre and sound, was inspired by whale song, as the title suggests. Normally it would be the “odd” piece on the program, but it is followed by a piece by Anton Bruckner, a quintet for strings that he wrote on commission in 1879.
It's extremely rare to hear it played live, though there are a number of good recordings. If you play it in concert, you have to deal with a few passages (and some critics would say more than a few) that are too orchestral for the quintet medium. Because it's by Bruckner it's rather long, but the slow movement is gorgeous.