Belcea Quartet
Performers
Belcea Quartet
·· Corina Belcea, Violin
·· Axel Schacher, Violin
·· Krzysztof Chorzelski, Viola
·· Antoine Lederlin, Cello
Program
MOZART String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589, "Prussian"
JOSEPH PHIBBS String Quartet No. 3 (World Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80
Encore:
BEETHOVEN Cavatina from String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.At a Glance
MOZART String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 589, “Prussian”
The three quartets that Mozart wrote in 1789–1790 for the cello-playing Prussian monarch Friedrich Wilhelm II are his last and among his finest contributions to the genre. Roughly contemporaneous with the comic opera Così fan tutte and the Clarinet Quintet, K. 581, the “Prussian” Quartets combine elegance, wit, and virtuosity. Bravura writing for both the first violin and the cello gives the B-flat–Major Quartet an extra measure of sparkle.
JOSEPH PHIBBS String Quartet No. 3
British composer Joseph Phibbs has an affinity for the lucid, well-crafted music of Benjamin Britten, of which it has been said that it had the power “to connect the avant-garde with the lost paradise of tonality.” Phibbs’s new String Quartet No. 3 represents a similar fusion of traditional and “post-tonal” or “postmodern” elements. Like his two previous quartets, it is laid out in discrete movements and combines lyrical, often rhapsodic passages with music of a driving, toccata-like character.
MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Mendelssohn seldom used music as a vehicle for expressing personal feelings. But the death of his sister Fanny in May 1847, less than six months before his own demise, seems to have compelled a musical response in the form of the powerful F-Minor Quartet, his last and arguably greatest piece of chamber music. That fall, Mendelssohn played the work on the piano for his friend Ignaz Moscheles, who remarked that “the passionate character of the entire piece seems to me to be consistent with his deeply disturbed frame of mind.”