Captivating Quartets
| 1. | Introduction | 00:00:46 |
| 2. | Zwilich: Abgang and Kaddish for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano | 00:15:41 |
| 3. | Brahms: Quartet in C minor for Strings, Op. 51, No. 1 | 00:42:02 |
| 4. | Closing | 00:00:30 |
The opening piece on this program by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich was composed just over five years ago and features an unusual instrumentation: a clarinet alongside a piano trio. The work, split into two movements begins with Abgang, which makes use of a Hebraic melody as well as a foxtrot drawing reference to the work of composers once held in German concentration camps as a memorial and tribute to their lives. The second movement, Kaddish, serves as the final prayer full of hope for peace. Brahms’ Quartet in C minor marks the composer’s first published work in the genre, though it stands on the backs of what is likely dozens of scrapped quartets. After being publicly hailed by Schumann as the next leader of German classical music, Brahms was both elated and intimidated. To be compared with the likes of Beethoven was to have a world of expectation placed upon you. The result is this first quartet which contains adventurous rhythms, somber themes, and Brahmsian drama.
PROGRAM
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Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (1939–) |
Abgang and Kaddish for Clarinet, Violin, Cello, and Piano (2019) David Shifrin, clarinet; Jaime Laredo, violin; Sharon Robinson, cello; Shai Wosner, piano |
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Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) |
Quartet in C minor for Strings, Op. 51, No. 1 (1873) Calidore String Quartet (Jeffrey Myers, Ryan Meehan, violin; Jeremy Berry, viola; Estelle Choi, cello) |
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David Shifrin
Calidore String Quartet
A Yale University faculty member since 1987, clarinetist David Shifrin is artistic director of Yale’s Chamber Music Society and the Yale in New York concert series. He has performed with CMS since 1982 and served as its artistic director from 1992 to 2004, inaugurating CMS’s Bowers Program and the annual Brandenburg Concertos concerts. He was the artistic director of Chamber Music Northwest from 1981 to 2020. Winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant (1987) and the Avery Fisher Prize (2000), he has held principal clarinet positions in numerous orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra and the American Symphony under Leopold Stokowski. As soloist, Shifrin has performed recitals at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and the Library of Congress. Notable concerto performances include the Philadelphia and Minnesota orchestras; the Dallas, Seattle, Houston, Milwaukee, and Denver symphonies; as well as orchestras in China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. Shifrin performs on clarinets made by Morrie Backun in Vancouver, Canada, and Légère synthetic reeds.
The Calidore String Quartet has been praised by the New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct.” The Los Angeles Times described the quartet as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,” approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching” and praised its balance of “intellect and expression.” Recipient of a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and a 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, the quartet first made international headlines as winner of the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition. The quartet was the first North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship, was a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, and is currently a season artist at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
In summer 2021, the Calidore made debuts at the Sarasota, La Jolla, and Saratoga Music Festivals as well as the Schubert Club of St. Paul, MN. Highlights of the 21-22 season include returns to Wigmore Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. The Calidore will make its debut at the Library of Congress, the 92nd Street Y, Harvard University, Penn State University, and internationally in The Hague and Antwerp. The ensemble will premiere a new work by composer Huw Watkins commissioned by Wigmore Hall and will collaborate with the Emerson Quartet and pianists Jeffrey Kahane, Henry Kramer, and Gabriela Fahnenstiel.
The Calidore String Quartet’s second album for Signum Records, entitled BABEL, was released in 2020 and features worksby Schumann, Shostakovich, and Caroline Shaw. The Strad selected the album as the “Editor’s Choice” and praised it as “breathtaking…a universally impressive disc.” The quartet’s other recording for Signum is 2018’s Resilience including quartets by Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Janácek, and Golijov.
The Calidore has given world premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Hannah Lash, and Mark-Anthony Turnage. Its collaborations with esteemed artists and ensembles include Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Marc-André Hamelin, Joshua Bell, David Shifrin, Inon Barnatan, Lawrence Power, Sharon Isbin, David Finckel, and Wu Han. An alum of CMS’s Bowers Program, the Calidore has collaborated and studied closely with the Emerson Quartet and Quatuor Ébène, and has also studied with Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, Günter Pichler, Guillaume Sutre, Paul Coletti, and Ronald Leonard. In 2021 the Calidore joined the faculty of the University of Delaware School of Music and serve as directors of the newly established Graduate String Quartet Residency.
The Calidore String Quartet was founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010. Within two years, the quartet won grand prizes in virtually all the major US chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competitions, and it captured top prizes at the 2012 ARD International Music Competition in Munich and the International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg. An amalgamation of “California” and “doré” (French for “golden”), the ensemble’s name represents its reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it received from its original home: Los Angeles, California, the “golden state.”