The Miró Quartet
Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 7:30 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
The Miró String Quartet, a powerhouse ensemble well known to CMS audiences, returns to the Alice Tully Hall stage in its 30th-anniversary year with a program showcasing the quartet’s technical and stylistic prowess. From a mature masterpiece by Joseph Haydn to a ground-breaking classic by Argentine master Alberto Ginastera, the program touches all the bases in the quartet literature, including a nod to the French tradition with the immortal quartet by Debussy and a sampling of the quartet thought to have inspired it, by César Franck.
Program
Joseph Haydn
(1732–1809)Quartet for Strings in D major, Hob. III:70, Op. 71, No. 2
(1793)Alberto Ginastera
(1916-1983)Quartet No. 2 for Strings, Op. 26
(1958)César Franck
(1822-1890)"Scherzo: Vivace" from Quartet in D major for Strings
(1889)Claude Debussy
(1862–1918)Quartet in G minor for Strings, Op. 10
(1893)
Miró Quartet
The Miró Quartet is one of America’s most celebrated string quartets, praised as “furiously committed” by The New Yorker and recognized for its “exceptional tonal focus and interpretive intensity” by the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Marking its 30th anniversary in 2025, the quartet has performed on the world’s most prestigious concert stages, earning accolades from critics and audiences alike. Based in Austin, Texas, and thriving on the area’s storied music scene, the quartet takes pride in finding new ways to communicate with audiences of all backgrounds while cultivating the longstanding tradition of chamber music. They were members of CMS Two (now the Bowers Program) from 2001 to 2003. Since 2003, they have served as the quartet-in-residence at the University of Texas at Austin Sarah and Ernest Butler School of Music. They were members of CMS Two (now the Bowers Program) from 2001 to 2003.
The Miró Quartet’s newest album, an acclaimed recording of Ginastera’s complete string quartets, was released on Pentatone in July 2025. Among its many previous recordings for a variety of global labels, the quartet was nominated for a 2025 Grammy Award for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for its album Home (Pentatone, 2024) featuring two new commissions by Kevin Puts and Caroline Shaw, as well as works by George Walker and Samuel Barber. It was also nominated for a 2024 Grammy Award for its album House of Belonging, created in collaboration with Austin-based choral group Conspirare.
The quartet’s recent and upcoming projects include Here on Earth with pianist Lara Downes, the premiere of a new version of Kevin Puts’s Credo, and collaborations with composers Steven Banks, Tamar-Kali, and Gabriel Kahane, as well as soprano Karen Slack and the Isadore Quartet.
The Miró Quartet took its name and its inspiration from the Spanish artist Joan Miró, whose Surrealist works—with subject matter drawn from the realm of memory, dreams, and imaginative fantasy—are some of the most groundbreaking, influential, and admired of the 20th century.
