2024-25 Chamber Arts Series

Tesla Quartet

Saturday, September 7, 2024, at 7:30 p.m.

The Tesla String Quartet is acclaimed for their superb capacity to find the inner heart of everything they play, regardless of era, style, or technical demand” (The International Review of Music). The ensemble brings a program of good humor and energy, beginning with a quartet by Haydn, in which he pulls a series of great musical jokes on the audience in the piece’s final movement. A piece by the unique Polish composer, Grażyna Bacewicz, sits at the heart of this program, imbued with a sense of optimism and childlike wonder. Bacewicz wrote this infectious work during her neoclassical era of composition, while living and working in Paris. Dvořák’s String Quartet No. 10 closes the concert; this charming piece is notable for its Slavic sensibilities, with the second movement written in a melancholic “dumka” form, the third in a more operatic Romanza and the final, triumphant movement referencing a lively Czech dance called the ‘skočńa.’

PROGRAM:

Haydn: String Quartet in E flat major, Op. 33 No. 2, “The Joke”
Bacewicz: String Quartet No. 3
Dvořák: String Quartet No. 10 in E flat major, Op. 51

Vesna Duo

Sunday, October 6, 2024, at 7:00 p.m.

Celebrated for their unique interpretations of original and transcribed works for piano and percussion, the Vesna Duo is ‘smashingly effective’ (Wall Street Journal). Hailing from Georgia and Serbia, Liana Pailodze Harron and Ksenija Komljenović explore a diverse blend of musical traditions and cultures in their programs. Their performance at Duke Arts is no exception, with the pair bringing their “Roots and Rhizomes” program featuring works by Georgian composer Davitashvili, Belgrade-born composer Sedlar and Israeli bassist and singer Avishai Cohen to the concert hall. These are paired with Komljenović’s arrangements of Stravinsky’s infamous (and riotous) ballet The Rite of Spring and Piazzolla’s La Muerte Del Ángel, the third of four movements of a suite based on a play by Alberto Rodríguez Muñoz called Tango del Ángel. In the play, the music accompanies the story of an angel who tries to heal the broken spirits of humans in a Buenos Aires tenement, only to die in a knife fight.

PROGRAM:

Roots & Rhizomes

Stravinsky arr. Komljenović: The Rite of Spring
Piazzolla arr. Komljenović: La Muerte Del Ángel
Davitashvili arr. Harron: Khorumi
Sedlar arr. Komljenović: Savcho III
Cohen arr. Komljenović: The Ever-Evolving Etude

Modigliani Quartet

Sunday, October 27, 2024, at 7:00 p.m.

The Modigliani Quartet has been making waves in the chamber music world since they first began playing together in 2003, following their studies at the prestigious Conservatoire de Paris. It was there they studied with the Ysaÿe Quartet and attended classes with Walter Levin and György Kurtág. Modigliani has gone on to perform on the world’s most prestigious stages and returns to Duke Arts with a typically wide-ranging program. The program begins with the most ‘unconventional:’ Webern’s Five Pieces, a fascinating web of interconnected motifs and melodies punctuated with unexpected instrument and bowing techniques. Two much-loved string quartets follow: the second of Beethoven’s three ‘Razumovsky’ Quartets and Ravel’s first and only string quartet: a bold masterpiece, which often sounds fuller than just its four instruments because of the depth of color explored throughout. It is often considered to be his first great work, signaling his rise from relative obscurity.

PROGRAM:
Webern: Five Movements for String Quartet, Op. 5
Ravel: String Quartet
Beethoven: Quartet No. 8 in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2

David Finckel, cello and Wu Han, piano

Sunday, November 17, 2024, at 7:00 p.m.

The cello-piano duo of David Finckel and Wu Han (recipients of Musical America’s Musicians of the Year Award and Artistic Directors of the Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center) return to Duke Arts with a journey through the great chamber works of Beethoven. They begin with the great composer’s pioneering first two cello sonatas, both of which present an elegantly expressive partnership between cello and piano. This is one of the first examples of the two instruments being placed on equal footing in chamber music, rather than the cello being limited to a continuo part. A few years after the success of these sonatas, Beethoven then wrote three sets of variations, all based on operatic tunes. We are treated to the first of those here in this recital: 12 Variations on ‘See, the conqu’ring hero comes,’ probably the best-known chorus from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus. Beethoven’s Op. 69 Sonata is considered by many to be the greatest cello sonata ever written, composed at the height of his ‘heroic period’ about a decade later in 1807.

PROGRAM:
Beethoven Journey
Sonata in F Major, op. 5 No. 1 (1796)
Sonata in G minor, op. 5 No. 2 (1796)
12 Variations on “See the conqu’ring hero comes” from Handel’s Judas Maccabeus WwO 545 (1797)
Sonata in A Major, op. 69 (1807-08)

Goldmund Quartet

Saturday, March 1, 2025, at 7:30 p.m.

The Goldmund Quartet has garnered a reputation as one of the leading string quartets of the great classical and modern works of the quartet canon, delivering performances of ‘exquisite playing’ (Süddeutsche Zeitung). The program the ensemble is bringing to Duke Arts spans more than 160 years, beginning with the most recent: Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 7. He composed the piece in 1960, dedicated to the memory of his first wife in the year that would have been her 50th birthday. Haydn’s Quartet No. 2 in F-Major, meanwhile, was written right at the end of the 18th century. It was his final quartet and is the pinnacle of his writing for the medium, showing his quartet writing at its very best. While Haydn wrote nearly 70 string quartets in his career, our next composer wrote just three, one of which has been lost, while another was never completed. The Goldmund Quartet will perform Grieg’s remaining quartet, a work praised by Franz Liszt for its ‘soaring flight and resonance for the instruments for which it is written.’

PROGRAM:
Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 7 in F-Sharp minor Op. 108 (‘The Lark’)
Haydn: String Quartet No. 2 in F-Major Op. 77
Grieg: String Quartet No. 1 in G-Minor Op. 27

Elias String Quartet

Saturday, March 15, 2025, at 7:30 p.m.

Founded in 1998 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, the Elias String Quartet is one of the UK’s foremost ensembles, celebrated by BBC Music Magazine as a ‘tour de force’ and The Strad as a ‘remarkable ensemble.’ They return to Duke Arts with a recital pairing wrought, emotional string quartets by the composing siblings, Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Fanny’s is her only mature string quartet, and one of the earliest surviving quartets written by a woman that we have on record. It celebrates German Romanticism, with dazzling flourishes of virtuosity and harmonic innovation. Her brother’s String Quartet No. 6 was written a decade later in tribute to her. Known as ‘Requiem for Fanny,’ the quartet was Felix’s final musical offering before his death, complete with unrelenting rhythms, syncopations and chromaticism. Following his sister’s death in May 1847, Felix was distraught, pouring his grief into this piece before he died several months later. Bridging these quartets is Entr’acte by North Carolina native Caroline Shaw, one of the most exciting voices on the contemporary chamber music scene today.

PROGRAM:
Mendhelssohn: String Quartet in E-flat-Major
Shaw: “Entr’act”
Mendhelssohn: String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80

Zodiac Trio

Sunday, April 6, 2025, at 7:00 p.m.

Taking full advantage of the unusual instrumentation of clarinet, violin and piano, the Zodiac Trio is at the forefront of innovative programming, heralded as ‘a breathtaking ensemble of virtuosity and sensitivity’ (Radio France). Famed for their winning combination of 20th-century classics and trailblazing new works, Zodiac brings a similarly exciting program to Duke Arts in a celebration of chamber works by American composers from the last century. From Scott Joplin’s much-loved Ragtime Dances to Daniel Gregory Mason’s lesser-known, brilliantly Brahmsian Pastorale, there’s plenty to discover here. There are works from the nineties by Joan Tower and Libby Larsen, both short in duration but pack a punch with their impact. Tower’s Rain Waves oscillates between pointillistic rain patterns of cascading notes with longer arched patterns to create images of wind. One of America’s most prolific and performed living composers, Larsen asks the performers to ‘freely change their performance styles as the musical language dictates’ in her 1994 work, Slang.

PROGRAM:
George Gershwin: An American in Paris 
Peter Schickele: Serenade for Three
Arturo Marquez: Danzon No. 2
“After you, Mr. Goodman:” A tribute to Benny Goodman (The World is Waiting for the Sunrise, Night and Day, Goodbye, Ding Dong Daddy)
Bela Bartok: Contrasts

Jerusalem Quartet

Saturday, May 3, 2025, at 7:30 p.m.

The Jerusalem Quartet is a regular performer with Duke Arts, always bringing their trademark ‘passion, precision and warmth’ (The Times). They return with Mozart’s so-called ‘Dissonance’ Quartet, which features some of the composer’s boldest harmonic writing. The dissonant theme continues with Shostakovich’s Twelfth Quartet, which utilizes the forces of the 12-tone row as he experiments with atonal techniques. Unlike other more traditional string quartets, there are only two movements in this vigorous, thrilling work. The piece’s dedicatee Dmitri Tsyganov (first violinist of the Beethoven Quartet) was known for his dynamic playing style, which is matched in the energy of this piece, with the players pushed to their physical limits. Bringing us back to more light-hearted fare is Brahms, who referred to his String Quartet No. 3 as ‘a useless trifle to avoid facing the serious countenance of a symphony,’ when referencing his process of writing the quartet alongside his First Symphony.

PROGRAM:
Mozart: Quartet in C-Major, K 465 (“Dissonence”)
Shostakovich: Quartet No. 12 in D Flat-Major, op. 133
Brahms: Quartet in B Flat-Major, op. 67