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
Jerusalem Quartet
“Passion, precision, warmth, a gold blend: these are the trademarks of this excellent Israeli string quartet.” – The Times, London
“Their Playing Has Everything You Could Possibly Wish For.” – BBC Music Magazine
Since the Jerusalem String Quartet’s debut in 1996, these four Israeli musicians have been on a remarkable journey of growth and maturation, resulting in a wide repertoire and stunning depth of expression, finding its core in a warm, full, human sound and an egalitarian balance between high and low voices.
Highlights of the upcoming 2023/2024 season include tours of Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland; and appearances in the quartet Biennales in Paris, Lisbon, and Amsterdam. Alongside the quartet’s regular programs, they will bring back the “Yiddish Cabaret”, and will perform a Bartok Cycle in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. Their upcoming North American tours include concerts in Montreal, Pittsburgh, Providence, Portland (Maine), Houston, Tucson, Palm Beach, Miami, New Orleans, Denver, Los Angeles, Carmel, New York, and other locations. In Ann Arbor, they will be joined by pianist Inon Barnaton.
THE PROGRAM
Joseph Haydn: Quartet in Bb-Major, Op 50, No. 1 (“Prussian”), 1787, 24 minutes / Ask Op. 76
Dmitri Shostakovich: Quartet No. 15 in E Flat Minor, Op. 144 (1974, 35 minutes) / OR Quartet No. 12, OP. 133
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Quartet No. 19 in C-Major, K. 465 “Dissonance” (1785, 32 minutes)
As noted above, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all wrote works in related “sets,” including the “Sun,” “Haydn,” and “Razumovsky” string quartets, respectively, most given their nicknames by people other than the composers for a variety of reasons. Haydn, “Father of the String Quartet, wrote 68, three times more than as Mozart and four times Beethoven, so he was able to create many more sets. His Op. 20 “Sun,” Op. 33 “Russian”, Op. 50 “Prussian,” and Op. 76 “Erdoddy,” all with six quartets each, are the most highly regarded. (the King of Prussia.)
The Op. 50 set was dedicated to King Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, an amateur cellist. No. 1 in B Flat gives the cello moments to shine, but not too terribly difficult. The cello even opens the piece alone.
For many, the fifteen string quartets by Dmitri Shostakovich represent a cycle of artistic devotion and intense, intimate expression second only to the sixteen quartets by Beethoven. For Shostakovich, the quartets provided a refuge from the more public and highly scrutinized genres of opera, symphony, ballet or film score where a negative judgment by totalitarian [Soviet] authorities threatened real and serious danger…Here, he could express himself more naturally and honestly and as with late Beethoven, the music is often deeply personal, introspective, and vividly autobiographical.
Shostakovich was also a great classicist, drawn to the preludes and fugues of Bach and the transcendent quartets of Beethoven and he strove to make his contribution in these august musical traditions. He planned to compose a set of twenty-four string quartets, one in each major and minor key, but he ran out of time. Dying of an aggressive cancer, and frequently hospitalized, Shostakovich completed his 15th and last string quartet at the age of 68 in 1974, less than a year before he died.
The 15th String Quartet is one of the most intense in the history of the genre, unique in its construction and dramatic affect. While it shares many qualities with other Shostakovich quartets and does not represent any necessarily radical departure, it is nonetheless singular for its unrelenting darkness. The quartet comprises six adagios all in the key of e-flat minor, played without pause in a seamless continuum of profound gloom. With such movement titles as Elegy and Funeral March, it is bleakly clear what Shostakovich seeks to express.
– Kai Christiansen via Earsense
Mozart’s Quartet No. 19 is sixth and last in a set completed in early 1785 and dedicated to Haydn. Haydn had published his milestone Op. 33 quartets just three years before. The title “Dissonance” comes from a lack of harmony early in the first movement. His publisher is said to have returned the score to Mozart, imagining that there were mistakes. On hearing it, a Count called his musicians incompetent. Haydn famously said, “If Mozart wrote it, he must have meant it.”
Gramophone ranks the “Dissonance” as being among the Top 10 String Quartets ever.