Chamber Music Cincinnati: Isidore Quartet and Jeremy Denk

If there were an award for the fastest rise in the past decade by a young string quartet after winning a key competition, the Isidore String Quartet would likely win. The quartet was formed in 2019, while its members were still students at New York’s Juilliard School. Following the Covid shutdown, they reconvened under the tutelage of the Julliard String Quartet’s legendary cellist, Joel Krosnick, with additional coaching by the JSQ’s late violist, Roger Tapping, it current cellist, Astrid Schween, Joseph Kalichstein, Misha Amory, Donald Weilerstein, and Miriam Fried, to name but a few.

In 2022, they won the 14th Banff International String Quartet Competition. In January 2023 gave a showcase concert during the annual Chamber Music America conference, where they were heard by an astonished audience that included some of the nation’s leading chamber music presenters. The same year (just last year) the quartet was also awarded the coveted Avery Fisher Career Grant. They have never looked back and barely stopped performing.

The Isidore has appeared on major series in Chicago, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Durham, Washington’s Kennedy Center), San Antonio, Toronto, Montreal, and Ottawa, and has collaborated James Ehnes, Jeremy Denk, Shai Wosner, and Jon Nakamatsu, among others.  Their 23/24 season features concerts at Berkeley’s Cal Performances, Boston’s Celebrity Series, Washington’s Phillips Collection, New York’s legendary 92nd St. Y series), and in Ann Arbor, Aspen, Baltimore, Denver, Calgary, Chicago, Edmonton, Houston, Indianapolis, La Jolla, Phoenix, Santa Fe, Tucson, Vancouver, among many others.  European highlights include Edinburgh, Lucerne, Brussels, Amsterdam, Hanover, Frankfurt, and Hamburg.

Jeremy Denk is one of America’s foremost pianists, proclaimed by the New York Times ‘a pianist you want to hear no matter what he performs.’ Denk is winner of both the MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship and the Avery Fisher Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His New York Times best-selling book, Every Good Boy Does Fine, A Love Story in Music, was published in 2022.

Denk returns frequently to Carnegie Hall and in recent seasons has appeared with the Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, and Cleveland Orchestra, as well as on tour with Academy St. Martin in the Fields, and at the Royal Albert Hall as part of the BBC Proms.

THE PROGRAM

 Only the Brahms is confirmed at the moment. The balance of the program “should” be known by Thursday.

 Bach Contrapuntus, 1-4 /(31:00 – 44:40)

Billy Childs (b. 1957), String Quartet No.2, Awakening (2012, 23:00)

Johannes Brahms (1833-1896), Piano Quintet in F Minor, Op. 34 (1865, 42:00)

The Brahms Piano Quintet has a unique history. It was initially a two-cello string quartet, then a two-piano sonata, then after a total of four years exceptional the work we know today. It is regarded as being at the pinnacle of works for this instrumentation along with those by Dvořák, Fauré, Franck, Schumann and Shostakovich