Doric String Quartet
Performers
Doric String Quartet
- Maia Cabeza, Violin
- Ying Xue, Violin
- Emma Wernig, Viola
- John Myerscough, Cello
Program
HAYDN String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4
BERG Lyric Suite
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135
Encore:
HAYDN Adagio from String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 64, No. 3
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.Salon Encores
Join us for a free drink at a post-concert reception in Weill Recital Hall’s Jacobs Room.
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At a Glance
HAYDN String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4
Haydn’s six Op. 20 string quartets dazzled audiences in the 1770s with their prodigal display of formal and melodic invention. In making the four players more or less equal partners, Haydn distanced himself from the top-heavy part writing that characterized the instrumental chamber music of the Rococo period. The Hungarian-flavored finale of the D-Major Quartet is a tour de force.
BERG Lyric Suite
Berg was in his 40s when he wrote his best-known piece of chamber music as a cryptic love letter to his paramour, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin. Like Berg’s opera Wozzeck and other works, the Lyric Suite fuses a strict, modernist 12-tone idiom with a freer romantic impulse. The suite’s “secret program” made headlines around the world when it was brought to light by American composer and musicologist George Perle in the June 1977 issue of the Newsletter of the International Alban Berg Society.
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135
Beethoven’s 16 string quartets are the Mount Everest of the genre, the pinnacle which other composers have long aspired to scale. All five of his late-period quartets were composed between the summer of 1824 and the autumn of 1826. In contrast to the three knotty quartets (opp. 127, 130, and 132) written for Prince Nikolai Golitsyn, Beethoven’s Russian patron, the F-Major Quartet is a lucid, lighthearted work in a traditional four-movement format.