The new Hixson-Lied Concert Series is the first time The University of Nebraska-Lincoln will present the Artists-in-Residence in a subscription concert series.
To launch the new concert series, the Chiara String Quartet will present the complete string quartets of Beethoven over the next two seasons. This is the first time since 1990 that all of Beethoven’s string quartets have been performed in Lincoln.
During the 2009-10 season, the Chiara offers three concerts, each featuring a work from the early, middle, and late periods of Beethoven's life. This concert will feature Beethoven’s String Quartet in Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1; Quartet in F minor, Op. 95; and Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 127.
“Performing a cycle of the complete Beethoven string quartets is reason enough to want to play in a string quartet,” says violinist Rebecca Fischer.
“The Beethoven quartets are like a microcosm of the entire string quartet experience. The energy, intensity, and intimacy of the string quartet life are encapsulated in these fifteen works (sixteen counting the Grosse Fuga). As performers, we relish the challenges Beethoven gives us while rehearsing, the joys of connection in performance, the phrasing to discuss and change for each successive performance, the never-ending work to be done. Our repertoire is endowed with great works, however, no other composer wrote so often, so well, and so differently for this medium during key phases in his life."
The Chiara Quartet was formed in 2000 and has been Artists-in-Residence at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln since 2005. As part of their work at UNL, the Chiara organizes and teaches a chamber music performance class, performs for the public and for classes and lectures in the School of Music, and teaches a small number of instrumental students. The Chiara Quartet also serves as Blodgett Artists-in-Residence (a visiting residency) at Harvard University, where they will be repeating the Beethoven Cycle programs heard in Lincoln.
Playing "Chamber Music in Any Chamber," the Chiara Quartet reaches from the concert hall into clubs, bars and galleries, expanding the places to hear live classical music while returning chamber music to its roots in intimate spaces. Described by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as "vastly talented, vastly resourceful, and vastly committed to the music of their time," the Chiara is also continually finding new meaning within pieces from the well-established quartet canon. Their performances have been described as "luminous," "searing," (New York Times) "soulful," "biting," and possessing a "potent collective force" (Strings Magazine).
About the Chiara String Quartet
Awarded the Guarneri Quartet Residency Award for artistic excellence by Chamber Music America, the Chiara Quartet's other honors include a top prize at the Paolo Borciani International Competition, winning the Astral Artistic Services National Audition, and winning First Prize at the Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
Alongside performances in major concert halls such as Lincoln Center's Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall, Philadelphia's Kimmel Center, and Harris Hall at the Aspen Music Festival, the Chiara devotes a portion of its performance season to concerts in non-classical venues including Galapagos Art Space in New York, The Tractor Tavern in Seattle, Avant Garden in Houston, and the Hideout in Chicago, among many others. Recent highlights of the Chiara Quartet's international performances include the American Academy in Rome, a critically-acclaimed eight-city tour of Sweden with clarinetist Håkan Rosengren, and a performance of Steve Reich's Different Trains in Munich at the storied Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität.
The 2009-10 season is the first year in the Chiara Quartet's two-year Beethoven cycle, during which they will perform all sixteen of Beethoven's string quartets in Cambridge and Northampton, MA and Lincoln, NE. In keeping with their commitment to bring classical music to uncommon places, the quartet will perform "Beethoven in Bars" at clubs throughout the country, featuring Beethoven's music with new works by young composers Thierry Tidrow, Lauren Loiacono and Matthew Ricketts. The Chiara Quartet will also make its debut at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; at the Philadelphia Museum of Art presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; and on the “Just Strings” concert series that takes the Chiara to three of New York City's boroughs.
Recent collaborators of the Chiara Quartet include Joel Krosnick, Roger Tapping, Todd Palmer, Simone Dinnerstein, Norman Fischer, and Paul Katz, as well as members of the Orion, Ying, Cavani, and Pacifica Quartets. The ensemble has premiered works by Gabriela Lena Frank, Jefferson Friedman, Michael Wittgraf, Randall Snyder, and Nico Muhly, among others.
The Chiara discography includes the Mozart and Brahms clarinet quintets with Håkan Rosengren for SMS Classical, and the world premiere recordings of Robert Sirota's Triptych and Gabriela Lena Frank's Leyendas: An Andean Walkabout for the Quartet's own New Voice Singles label. In 2007, the Chiara recorded Jefferson Friedman's Second and Third Quartets, and they are currently at work recording the complete string quartets of Brahms for SMS Classical.
The Chiara trained and taught at The Juilliard School, mentoring for two years with the Juilliard Quartet, as recipients of the Lisa Arnhold Quartet Residency from 2003-05.
More information about the Chiara Quartet can be found online at www.chiaraquartet.net, on MySpace at www.myspace.com/chiarastringquartet and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/chiarastringquartet.
Recent Comments