Chamber Music Cincinnati,
Chamber Music Cincinnati,
Wed, November 13, 2024
7:30 PM
$25.00 - $40.00
Chamber Music Cincinnati: Cuarteto Casals
“No other quartet can match this group’s four-voiced marriage…” – The Independent (London)
“There’s something so immediate about the superb Casals Quartet’s playing…” – Gramophone
There are a handful of superb European quartets that don’t spend enough time in America, sometimes because they perform so regularly in Europe or because they prefer not being away from family. Founded in 1997, the Madrid based Quarteto Casals quickly won the London and Brahms-Hamburg quartet competitions. For more than a quarter century they have performed at Europe’s foremost concert halls, the Berlin Philharmonie, bothe Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverien, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, as well as Tokyo’s Suntory Hall and New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Gramophone named the Casals’s most recent Mozart recording one of the Best Albums of 2021, one of the 50 finest Mozart recordings in history, and its recording of choice of his Quartet No. 19, “Dissonance.” We are thrilled to finally have Quarteto Casals perform in Cincinnati.
THE PROGRAM
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Quartet in D Major, K. 499 “Hoffmeister” (1786, 26 minutes)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 (1944, 36 minutes)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Quartet No. 15 in a Minor, Op. 132 (1823-25, 45 minutes)
Unlike Mozart’s famous quartet sets―like his six “Haydn” or three “Prussian” string quartets―Mozart’s “Hoffmeister” stands alone. One of his “true greats, it is a prime example of the composer’s extraordinary ability to interweave exuberance and seriousness.
Shostakovich’s second string quartet was written more than 20 years after he entered the Petrograd Conservatory and six years after he wrote the first of what were intended to be 24 quartets in all 24 major and minor keys. The fifteen he completed are regarded by many as among the most remarkable achievements for this instrumentation after Beethoven’s string quartets. Their intimate character is often contrasted by critics and musicologists with that of the 15 Shostakovich symphonies, spectacles written for public consumption, sometimes reflecting historical events. Russia’s Beethoven Quartet premiered all but the first and last. The Glauzunov Quartet premiered the first in 1936.
Beethoven’s Op. 132 was the 13th of his quartets written and the 15th to be published, part of his Late Quartets, now regarded as the greatest achievement of this instrumentation. It was originally intended to have four movements, but the composer because seriously ill during it composition. Once recovered, Beethoven added a fifth movement, third in order, in gratitude for his recovery titled A Convalescent’s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode.”
Chamber Music Cincinnati: Cuarteto Casals
“No other quartet can match this group’s four-voiced marriage…” – The Independent (London)
“There’s something so immediate about the superb Casals Quartet’s playing…” – Gramophone
There are a handful of superb European quartets that don’t spend enough time in America, sometimes because they perform so regularly in Europe or because they prefer not being away from family. Founded in 1997, the Madrid based Quarteto Casals quickly won the London and Brahms-Hamburg quartet competitions. For more than a quarter century they have performed at Europe’s foremost concert halls, the Berlin Philharmonie, bothe Vienna’s Konzerthaus and Musikverien, and Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, as well as Tokyo’s Suntory Hall and New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Gramophone named the Casals’s most recent Mozart recording one of the Best Albums of 2021, one of the 50 finest Mozart recordings in history, and its recording of choice of his Quartet No. 19, “Dissonance.” We are thrilled to finally have Quarteto Casals perform in Cincinnati.
THE PROGRAM
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Quartet in D Major, K. 499 “Hoffmeister” (1786, 26 minutes)
Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 (1944, 36 minutes)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Quartet No. 15 in a Minor, Op. 132 (1823-25, 45 minutes)
Unlike Mozart’s famous quartet sets―like his six “Haydn” or three “Prussian” string quartets―Mozart’s “Hoffmeister” stands alone. One of his “true greats, it is a prime example of the composer’s extraordinary ability to interweave exuberance and seriousness.
Shostakovich’s second string quartet was written more than 20 years after he entered the Petrograd Conservatory and six years after he wrote the first of what were intended to be 24 quartets in all 24 major and minor keys. The fifteen he completed are regarded by many as among the most remarkable achievements for this instrumentation after Beethoven’s string quartets. Their intimate character is often contrasted by critics and musicologists with that of the 15 Shostakovich symphonies, spectacles written for public consumption, sometimes reflecting historical events. Russia’s Beethoven Quartet premiered all but the first and last. The Glauzunov Quartet premiered the first in 1936.
Beethoven’s Op. 132 was the 13th of his quartets written and the 15th to be published, part of his Late Quartets, now regarded as the greatest achievement of this instrumentation. It was originally intended to have four movements, but the composer because seriously ill during it composition. Once recovered, Beethoven added a fifth movement, third in order, in gratitude for his recovery titled A Convalescent’s Holy Song of Thanksgiving to the Deity, in the Lydian Mode.”
