This concert is performed by the Calidore String Quartet, an ensemble acclaimed for its expressive artistry and balance of technical brilliance with warmth. The program opens with a String Quartet in F major long attributed to Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and inventor. Though its authorship remains uncertain, the piece offers a fascinating glimpse into 18th-century musical life. Haydn’s “Joke” Quartet follows, one of the witty Op. 33 quartets that earned him the title “father of the string quartet.” Mozart’s “Prussian” Quartet in B-flat major, written for the cello-loving King of Prussia, highlights graceful melodies and elegant writing for all four instruments. The Italian Serenade by Hugo Wolf brings lively charm and character, and the evening closes with Wynton Marsalis’s At the Octoroon Balls, a modern work that draws on jazz, blues, and dance rhythms to give the string quartet an unmistakably American voice.
Program
Benjamin Franklin (attr.)
(1706-1790)Quartet No. 2 in F major for Three Violins and Cello
Joseph Haydn
(1732–1809)Quartet in E-flat major for Strings, Hob. III:38, Op. 33, No. 2, "The Joke"
(1781)Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
(1756–1791)Quartet in B-flat major for Strings, K. 589, "Prussian"
(1790)Hugo Wolf
(1860-1903)Italian Serenade for String Quartet
(1887)Wynton Marsalis
(b .1961)At the Octoroon Balls for String Quartet
(1995)
Calidore String Quartet
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.”