Saturday night in Slosberg Music Center, the Brandeis Concert Series hosted a recital by the Solar Winds Quintet. The quintet performed pieces all composed by women, which is the theme for the concert series this year.

The quintet was composed of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn, and guest pianist John Kramer joined for the last piece.

The crowd in the Slosberg Recital Hall, not even half full, was a mostly older crowd with very few students. But the audience eagerly gave applause when the musicians walked on stage.

Five pieces were played, with an intermission after the third. After the first piece, Neil Fairbairn, who played the bassoon in the quintet, got up to introduce the group.

Fairbairn said that every year the concert series always chooses a theme. Last year’s was French composers, and this year the quartet had already chosen three pieces by female composers, so they decided to make the entire concert consist of pieces by female artists.

Many of the women whose pieces were played, particularly Amy Beach, Claude Arrieu and Louise Farrenc, were outlying leaders in their male-dominated musical fields during the 19th and 20th centuries. One student in the audience, Cheryl Burns ’15, a flutist, said that she thought it was “cool that they were [playing pieces composed by] all women,” and that the musicians “seem very skilled, not that a lot of students aren’t skilled, but this was like next level.”

Some of the pieces were slower than others and didn’t leave much of an impression. There were also times when the pieces seemed out of sync, and the resulting sound was not pleasing to the ear.

The third piece, called “Quintette en Ut,” by Arrieu, was perhaps the most diverse piece the quintet played.

This piece was composed of five movements, which strategically switched between lighter, quicker paced music and slower more melodic music.

Oboist harlyn Bethell introduced this piece as having “many surprises” and advised the audience that they would hear “many new sounds.” Both Bethell and Burns referred to the piece as having an incredible amount of dissonance. It was certainly difficult to grow bored during this piece.

The fourth piece was introduced by Bethell as “a traditional wind quintet … filled with violent forward drive … dissonance … and beauty.” It certainly was violent, and not in a good way. The piece was jarringly loud and, at times, even screechy.

The program called the piece, “a percussive, sometimes violent work that combines the idiom of Eliot Carter with the attitude of heavy metal.” The heavy metal did not sound good mixed with the classical style. It was the fifth and last piece that clearly took the cake for the performance.

It was obvious with the fifth piece, “Sextet in c-mole op. 40” by Farrenc, that the quintet had saved the best for last.

The last piece was supplemented by Kramer, and altogether it created a much fuller, more complete sound.

French hornist Neil Godwin introduced the piece as belonging to a composer with “a very romantic, early romantic style, somewhere between Beethoven and Schuman.”

He went on to say that this piece is “one of her great masterpieces” and that the popularity of Farrenc’s pieces was “lost after her lifetime, but she was certainly very respected during her lifetime.”

According to the program, Farrenc “was arguably the greatest woman composer of the nineteenth century [and] the only female professor at the Paris Conservatory.” This certainly showed in the performance. The piece was by far the most moving of all the pieces and incredibly beautiful.

Composed of three movements, the first movement takes the listener on an adventure with a grand and heartfelt sound.

The second movement has a much more romantic sound—slower and deeper. The third, a very dramatic piece, ended the concert with a bang.

If the whole concert had been as engaging and beautifully played as the last piece, it would have ended on a much more satisfying note.

“I don’t usually go to events on campus,” said Burns, “but this one looked interesting.”

In many ways, the performance measured up. It was interesting to learn about these different female composers, the struggles that they went through to become leaders in their fields and to hear such a variety of different styles in one performance.