Parker Quartet
Performers
Parker Quartet
- Daniel Chong, Violin
- Ken Hamao, Violin
- Jessica Bodner, Viola
- Kee-Hyun Kim, Cello
Program
ZEMLINSKY String Quartet No. 1 in A Major, Op. 4
THOMAS ADÈS The Four Quarters
BRAHMS String Quartet No. 3
Encore:
DEBUSSY Andantino, doucement expressif from String Quartet in G Minor
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
Vienna was the epicenter of the string quartet. Although other cities can lay claim to chapters of the genre’s history, it was fostered with particular alacrity in the Habsburg capital during the 18th and 19th centuries. Understandably, the Hamburg-born Brahms was drawn to Vienna and its various musical masters—namely Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, as well as his beloved Schubert—and eventually decided to settle in the city. It would, however, take him some time to release his own quartets to the public. The first two were serious-minded works, echoing the import of his symphonic output. But in 1875, while awaiting the premiere of his First Symphony, Brahms wrote the ostensibly lighter String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat Major, Op. 67, with which the Parker Quartet closes this evening’s concert.
Given the resourcefulness of that score, not least the variation structure that constitutes its last movement, it is easy to hear why Zemlinsky and his peers idolized Brahms. Naming himself a “Brahmin,” the young composer began writing various homages to his hero. But as we glean from Zemlinsky’s String Quartet No. 1, completed just a year before Brahms’s death, the path towards a more intricate future was already apparent in the sheer range of Zemlinsky’s thematic material and its emotional impact.
Between these two Viennese masters comes a modern response to the string quartet: Thomas Adès’s The Four Quarters, which received its world premiere at Carnegie Hall in March 2011. Following a later performance, The Washington Post described “a fascinating, virtuosic, and spectacularly colorful journey through the course of a day”—proof, Stephen Brookes maintained, “that the string quartet genre is still alive, well, and inspiring brilliant new work.”