ARTARIA ANNOUNCES NEW SEASON Sundin Hall Series and Wayzata Chamber Series ST. PAUL – August 27, 2014 The Artaria String Quartet returns to the warm and ambient sound of Sundin Music Hall and the intimate Chapel at Wayzata Community Church to present a series of captivating chamber music programs for Twin Cities audiences. Highlights of the season include a tuneful string quartet gem by Ignaz Pleyel, remarkable early quartets by Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Carl Nielsen, and an emotionally charged Quartet in a-minor by William Walton. Tickets for the Sundin Music Hall series can be purchased by calling the Sundin Hall box office at 651-523-2459 or visiting the website: hamline.edu/sundin/music-series.html#asq. Sundin Music Hall is located at 1531 Hewitt Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota. No tickets are required for the Wayzata Community Church series; however, a free will offering is suggested. Artaria’s 2014-15 Chamber Music Concerts The Artaria String Quartet’s theme for its 2014-15 season of concerts is a play on the 4/4 time signature known as “common time.” But more significantly it refers to the four decades of music chosen for the four programs. PROGRAM 1 – Homage to Haydn Haydn Op.33 No5 Pleyel Op.2 No.3 Mozart K.465 “Dissonance” September 21, 2014 (Sundin Music Hall) & September 28, 2014 (Wayzata Community Church) at 3pm “Homage to Haydn” concerns the decade of 1780-1790 (the Classical Period) when Haydn and Mozart flourished in Austria and Pleyel came into his own in France. The homage to Haydn is especially appropriate not only because of his fatherhood of the string quartet, but also because he served as mentor to both Mozart and Pleyel. In his biography of Haydn, Karl Geiringer refers to the 1780-1790 period of Haydn’s music in a chapter entitled “Love and Friendship,” something that plays out in the Op. 33 quartets, one of which is included in this program. PROGRAM 2 – Fin de Siècle Schoenberg Quartet (1897) Puccini Crisantemi Nielsen Quartet in f-minor Op.5 November 23, 2014 (Sundin Music Hall) & November 30, 2014 (Wayzata Community Church) at 3pm Every century has its ending, but the close of the 19th century, particularly in Vienna, was so unique in both its turmoil and its glorious achievements that it has taken on the singular title of “Fin de Siècle.” Those who correctly associate Schoenberg with modern atonality will be surprised by the traditional aspects of his D Major String Quartet of 1897, his first exploration in the form. Among Puccini’s monumental catalogue of operas, this piece for string quartet comes as a pleasant surprise. Although a relatively simple one-movement work, it still carries the mark of genius. Composed in 1890, the same year as Manon Lescaut, the work could be perceived as an operatic interlude and a serious one at that. In fact, Puccini would reuse thematic material from “I Crisantemi” in the third act of Manon. From its breathtaking opening, Carl Nielsen’s Quartet in F minor is filled with surprises. The first movement, inspired on a crowded train, was completed in Copenhagen, the second in Berlin, and the third and fourth movements in Dresden. PROGRAM 3 – Music during Wartime Alwyn “Winter Poems” Porter Quartet No.6 Walton Quartet No.2 February 22, 2015 (Wayzata Community Church) & March 1, 2015 (Sundin Music Hall) at 3pm Program III features music written in the 1940’s starting with a melancholic string quartet entitled “Winter Poems” by English composer William Alwyn. Second on the program is Quincy Porter’s epic String Quartet No. 6, written while Porter was director of the New England Conservatory. Porter was the violist of the Ribaupierre Quartet, and one of the few American composers who penned an extensive cycle of string quartets – 9 in toto. The second half of the concert features the emotionally charged 2nd String Quartet of William Walton, a work that “bristles with nervous energy” [The Times] with a “rapturous slow movement…surely one of Walton’s most deeply personal inspirations”. [Gramophone] PROGRAM 4 – Reveling in Romanticism Strauss Quartet Op.2 Dvořák Quartet in Eb Op.51 May 10, 2015 (Sundin Music Hall) & May 17, 2015 (Wayzata Community Church) at 3pm Program IV highlights music from 1870-1880. It features the youthful String Quartet in A-major written in 1880 by Richard Strauss when he was 16 years old. The String Quartet, not unlike the D Minor Symphony and Piano Sonata Op. 5 of the same period, reveals the young composers devotion to the Viennese masters, and Haydn in particular. To close the four program series, Artaria will present Antonín Dvorak’s strikingly nationalistic and deeply personal E-flat Quartet, opus 51. Composed a year before the Strauss quartet, Op. 51 is “arguably the earliest of Dvorak’s quartets to be truly well-known and to occupy a place in the standard repertoire, along with the C major, A-flat major, and ‘American’ quartets.” [Misha Amory]. This Quartet is known as the “Slavic” quartet because of its genesis – Jean Becker of the Florentine Quartet commissioned the work, requesting a quartet “in the Slavic style”.
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 13:29:02 +0000
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