American String Quartet to be a string festival highlight
American String Quartet
The American String Quartet, internationally recognized as one of the world's finest quartets, will perform at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 24, at the Arthur Zankel Music Center on the Skidmore College campus, as part of the college's annual String Festival.
The American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. Quartet members are Peter Winograd (violin), Laurie Carney (violin), Daniel Avshalomov (viola), and Wolfram Koessel (cello). The group celebrated its 35th anniversary in the 2010-2011 season and in its years of touring, has performed in all 50 states and appeared in the most important concert halls worldwide. The quartet's presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Bart k, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and its MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.
Formed when its original members were students at the Juilliard School, the American String Quartet's career began with the group winning both the Coleman Competition and the Naumburg Award in the same year. Individually, the members devote additional time outside the quartet's active performance and teaching schedule to solo appearances, recitals, and master classes.
The March 24 concert will include Franz Joseph Haydn's Quartet in G Major, Op. 77, No. 1.Many of the motifs in this piece, though obviously of folk-song extraction and endowed with great directness of expression and simplicity of means, are treated with Haydn's own sophisticated, learned compositional approach.
B la Bart k'sString Quartet No. 6was written during World War II, and it is not difficult to hear some of the anguish Bart k must have been suffering as it became clear that he would have to flee his beloved Hungary. One piece of musical evidence of his despair is the linear progression of the four movements in this work?each one is slower than its predecessor?that finally ends in a mood of bleak resignation.
Maurice Ravel's String Quartet in F Major is perfectly crafted; its structure is lean ? each instrument is given lovely things to say in registers that flatter it and its suave sensuality charms listeners from start to finish.
Admission for the March 24 American String Quartet performance at Zankel Music Center is $12 adults, $7 seniors, and $3 for Skidmore students, faculty and staff. For advance reservations visit www.skidmore.edu/zankel or call the Zankel box office (518) 580-8381 for more information. The Zankel Music Center is wheelchair accessible and offers listening devices for the hearing impaired. For more information, please visit www.skidmore.edu/zankel.