Sunday, November 3, 2019 - 3:00 PM
2pm: Onstage talk with Matthew Aucoin, Mark Steinberg, & Ara Guzelimian, provost and dean of The Juilliard School
The leading American ensemble returns for a program featuring the world premiere of our second commission by MacArthur grant-winning composer Matthew Aucoin between two classic quartets. We partnered with Carnegie Hall, La Jolla Music Society, and the Da Camera of Houston to bring this new work to you!
Mozart: E-flat major Quartet, K. 428
Aucoin: String Quartet (world premiere)
Commissioned by Union College Concert Series, Carnegie Hall, La Jolla Music Society, and Da Camera of Houston for the Brentano String Quartet
Ravel: F-major Quartet
Sponsored by:
ONLINE SALES WILL BE HELD AT WILL-CALL
TICKETS $40 AT DOOR
General Admission seating – doors open 45 minutes before concert.
All kids and college students admitted free at door.
Ticket information and policies
Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. “Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding,” raves the London Independent; the New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism.”
Within a few years of its formation, the Quartet garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and was also honored in the UK with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut. Since then, the Quartet has concertized widely, performing in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House.
In addition to performing the entire two-century range of the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet maintains a strong interest in contemporary music and has commissioned many new works. Their latest project, a monodrama for quartet and voice called Dido Reimagined, was composed by Pulitzer-winning composer Melinda Wagner and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann and had its premiere in spring 2022 with soprano Dawn Upshaw. Other recent commissions include the composers Matthew Aucoin, Lei Liang, Vijay Iyer, James Macmillan, and a cello quintet by Steven Mackey (performed with Wilhelmina Smith, cello.)
The Brentano Quartet has worked closely with other important composers of our time, among them Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung, Bruce Adolphe, and György Kurtág. They have also been privileged to collaborate with such artists as soprano Jessye Norman, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, and pianists Richard Goode, Jonathan Biss, and Mitsuko Uchida. The Quartet has recorded works by Mozart and Schubert for Azica Records, and all of Beethoven’s late quartets for the Aeon label. In 2012, they provided the central music (Beethoven Opus 131) for the critically-acclaimed independent film A Late Quartet.
Since 2014, the Brentano Quartet has served as artists-in-residence at the Yale School of Music. They were formerly the ensemble-in-residence at Princeton University and were twice invited to be the collaborative ensemble for the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.
The Quartet is named for Antonie Brentano, whom many scholars consider to be Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved”, the intended recipient of his famous love confession.
