Hawthorne String Quartet to be in residence for festival

Musicians of the Hawthorne String Quartet will be joined by a contemporary artist in a chamber music performance at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, in Filene Recital Hall at Skidmore College.

The Boston and Berkshires-based quartet will be Sterne Virtuoso Artists-in-Residence at the college from Feb. 27 to March 1 for the fifth annual Skidmore String Music Festival. Festival events are open to the public. General admission for the Feb. 28 concert is $5, or $2 for seniors or students. The event is part of the Sterne Virtuoso Series at Skidmore.

Each year the college invites high school string players in pre-formed string quartets to participate in a three-day string festival alongside Skidmore student quartets, coached and inspired by renowned guest artists.

This year festival coordinator Michael Emery invited the Hawthorne String Quartet, which features four Boston Symphony Orchestra players, including violist Mark Ludwig. Ludwig presented several well-received programs and musical events during a previous Sterne Virtuoso residency at Skidmore.

Hawthorne String Quartet will return later in the College?s spring semester, performing at a Holocaust Remembrance Day event (Yom HaShoah) at the Tang Museum April 20, and as featured quartet with the Skidmore College Orchestra April 25 in Filene Recital Hall. HSQ was formed in 1986, and has distinguished itself internationally by championing the works of composers persecuted during the Nazi regime, with an emphasis on Czech composers incarcerated in the Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezin). With the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Deutsch Kammerphilharmonie, the quartet gave both American and German premiere performances of Erwin Schulhoff?s Concerto for Solo String Quartet and Wind Chamber Orchestra.

The quartet takes its name from the New England novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of the classic The Scarlet Letter. Quartet members are Ronan Lefkowitz and Si-Jing Huang, violins; Ludwig; and Sato Knudsen, cello.

For the Feb. 28 performance the group will perform quartets by Franz Schubert (No. 13 ?Rosamunde?); Charles Ives (No. 1); and Elliott Carter (Fragment No. 2). Berkshires-based artist Jim Schantz will join the group and create a painting inspired by HSQ?s performance of Czech composer Hans Kr sa?s String Quartet. Before his incarceration at Terezin, Kr sa was widely considered one of the most promising voices of his musical generation. Tragically, he did not survive his imprisonment.

In researching Kr sa?s String Quartet, Ludwig discovered that the composer envisioned his composition being performed while an artist actively painted in response to the music, before an audience.
This choreography of music and color has its experimental roots in the surrealist movement, according to Ludwig, a Fulbright scholar who founded the Terezin Chamber Music Foundation to preserve and perform the music created by those who died in the Holocaust.

?The Quartet (1921) and Kr sa?s vision for this composition symbolize the great promise of this lost generation,? Ludwig writes in his synopsis of Remembrance & Beyond: A Legacy in Music & Painting, a Terezin Chamber Music Foundation project in progress that involves concert performances in the United States and Europe, and a DVD and book chronicling ?the journey through the intersections of memory, healing and transformation.?

In addition to the Saturday-night concert by HSQ, festival participants will be coached in performing string quartets they have prepared, and will join in a group performance of the Finale from Mendelssohn?s Octet at 3 p.m. Sunday. High School Quartets participating in the festival include the New Jersey Youth Symphony Quartet; the Manchester Community Music School Quartet; and the Saratoga Springs Youth Orchestra Quartet.

Musicians of the Saratoga Springs ensemble are Lily Holgate and Phillip Ducreay, violins; Zachary Evans, viola; and David Burns, cello. Holgate and Burns attend Saratoga Springs High School. Ducreay is a student at Schenectady High School, and Evans attends Nikayuna High School. Their ensemble coach is Jonathin Brin.

Skidmore student quartets participating include the following:

? Beethoven Quartet in F minor: Hanna Tonegawa ?11 violin, Gabriella Sultanik ?11 violin, Munkhtsetseg Ayurzana ?09 viola, and Andrew Brown ?09 cello.

? Mendelssohn Quartet in A minor: Erin Anderson ?09 violin, Sarah Goldstein ?09 viola, Peri Strongwater ?11 viola, and William Cusey ?09 cello.

Additional Skidmore students participating in the Mendelssohn Octet Finale performance are: Victoria Vitale ?12 violin, Vasiliki Manginis ?12 violin, Katherine Bohn ?11 violin, Jessica Taffet ?12 viola, Daniel Vidali ?09 cello, and James Merrick ?11 cello.

(Photo above: Hawthorne String Quartet members Ronan Lefkowitz, violin (l); Sato Knudsen, cello; Si-Jing Huang, violin;
Mark Ludwig, viola)