Verdi and Sibelius Quartets
Sun, May 3, 2026, 5:00 pm
Alice Tully Hall
2 hours, including intermission
Does climate affect the way music is composed? Come find out for yourself in this unusual program juxtaposing works composed near earth’s 45th and 60th parallels, where temperatures and daylight hours differ dramatically. The Escher Quartet offers its signature performances of Verdi and Sibelius, while the indomitable duo of Alexander Sitkovetsky and Wu Qian provide bracing cold and soothing warmth.
Program
Giuseppe Verdi
(1813—1901)Quartet in E minor for Strings
(1873)Edvard Grieg
(1843–1907)Sonata No. 3 in C minor for Violin and Piano, Op. 45
(1886)Enrique Granados
(1867-1916)Romanza for Violin and Piano
(c. 1909)Jean Sibelius
(1865-1957)Quartet in D minor for Strings, Op. 56, "Voces intimae"
(1909)
Wu Qian
Alexander Sitkovetsky
Escher String Quartet
Winner of a 2016 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award, as well as classical music’s bright young star award for 2007 by The Independent, pianist Wu Qian has maintained a busy international career for over a decade. She has appeared as soloist in many international venues including the Wigmore, Royal Festival, and Bridgewater halls in the UK, City Hall in Hong Kong, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. As a soloist she has appeared with the Konzerthaus Orchester in Berlin, the Brussels Philharmonic, the London Mozart Players, I Virtuosi Italiani, the European Union Chamber Orchestra, and the Munich Symphoniker. She won first prize in the Trio di Trieste Duo Competition and the Kommerzbank Piano Trio competition in Frankfurt, and has received numerous other awards. Appearances this season include performances in the UK, Germany, USA, Korea, Australia, Spain, and The Netherlands and collaborations with Alexander Sitkovetsky, Leticia Moreno, Cho-Liang Lin, Clive Greensmith, and Wu Han. Her debut recording of Schumann, Liszt, and Alexander Prior was met with universal critical acclaim. She is a founding member of the Sitkovetsky Piano Trio with which, in addition to performing in major concert halls and series around the world, she has released two recordings on the BIS label and also a disc of Brahms and Schubert on the Wigmore Live Label. Wu Qian an alum of The Bowers Program.
Violinist Alexander Sitkovetsky was born in Moscow into a family with a well-established musical tradition. Since his concerto debut at the age of eight, he has performed as soloist and chamber musician in many of the major venues around the world including Vienna’s Musikverein, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw and the Wigmore Hall in London. This season he will make his subscription debut with the Budapest Festival Orchestra, among other engagements. He is the Artistic Director of the NFM Leopoldinum Chamber Orchestra in Wrocław, Poland, and is a founding member of the Sitkovetsky Trio, which regularly performs throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas and is recognized as one of the most important ensembles performing today. Sitkovetsky is an alum of CMS’s Bowers Program and plays the 1679 “Parera” Antonio Stradivari violin, kindly loaned to him through the Beare’s International Violin Society by a generous sponsor.
The Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its profound musical insight and rare tonal beauty. A former BBC New Generation Artist and recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, the quartet has performed at the BBC Proms at Cadogan Hall and is a regular guest at Wigmore Hall. In its home town of New York, the ensemble appears regularly at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
The quartet achieved critical success in their performances of the entire cycle of string quartets by Béla Bartók in single-concert format, both at Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. Recordings of the complete Mendelssohn quartets and beloved Romantic quartets of Dvorák, Borodin, and Tchaikovsky were released on the BIS label in 2015–18 and were received with the highest critical acclaim.
Beyond the concert hall, the quartet is proud to announce the creation of a new non-profit, ESQYRE (Escher String Quartet Youth Residency Education). ESQYRE’s mission as a non-profit classical music organization is to provide a comprehensive educational program through music performance and instruction for people of all ages. In addition to their non-profit work, the quartet has also held faculty positions at Southern Methodist University and the University of Akron.
Within months of its inception in 2005, the ensemble came to the attention of key musical figures worldwide. Championed by the Emerson String Quartet, the Escher String Quartet was invited by both Pinchas Zukerman and Itzhak Perlman to be Quartet in Residence at each artist’s summer festival: the Young Artists Program at Canada’s National Arts Centre, and the Perlman Chamber Music Program on Shelter Island, New York.
The Escher String Quartet takes its name from the Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher, inspired by Escher’s method of interplay between individual components working together to form a whole.
