Robin Hixon Theater, Jay and Clay Barr Education Center

Concert co-presented with the Virginia Arts Festival

Program:
HAYDN String Quartet in F minor, Op.20, No.5
BORODIN String Quartet No.2 in D major
MENDELSSOHN String Quartet No.6 in F minor, Op.80

These phenomenal young players formed their quartet when they were just 19-year-old students at the Curtis Institute. There followed a stunning sweep of top awards and a leap to international stardom, with The New Yorker magazine naming them “the young American string quartet of the moment.” Virginia Arts Festival audiences will have a chance to hear them in repertoire that includes Mozart as part of the André-Michel Schub celebration. That’s good news: in the spate of glowing reviews that have greeted their performances, The Washington Post particularly admired their way with Mozart: “the sound was lambent and evenly balanced, with the musicians delighting in uncovering this near-perfect score’s musical details and, tellingly, enjoying hearing one another play it. A triumph!”

“The Dover Quartet players have it in them to become the next Guarneri String Quartet — they’re that good. Expert musicianship, razor-sharp ensemble, deep musical feeling and a palpable commitment to communication made their performances satisfying on many levels.” – Chicago Tribune

“The Dover Quartet’s Kennedy Center debut shows why they should be on must-hear list.” The Washington Post

he Grand Prize but all three Special Prizes at the 2013 Banff International String Quartet Competition.  The Quartet also won top prizes at the Fischoff Competition and the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, and has taken part in festivals such as Chamber Music Northwest, Artosphere, La Jolla SummerFest, Bravo! Vail, and the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival.  During the 2013-14 season, the Quartet acted as the Ernst Stiefel String Quartet-in-Residence at the Caramoor Festival. Additionally, members of the Quartet have appeared as soloists with some of the world’s finest orchestras, including the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Tokyo Philharmonic.

The Dover Quartet draws from the musical lineage of the Cleveland, Vermeer, and Guarneri Quartets, having studied at the Curtis Institute and Rice University’s Shepherd School of Music, where they were in residence from 2011-2013.  The Quartet has been mentored extensively by Shmuel Ashkenasi, James Dunham, Norman Fischer, Kenneth Goldsmith, Joseph Silverstein, Arnold Steinhardt, Michael Tree, and Peter Wiley, and is dedicated to sharing their music with underserved communities and is an active member of Music for Food, an initiative to help musicians fight hunger in their home communities.

Order tickets here

at Chrysler Museum of Art

• Haydn: Trio in G, No. 39 Hob XV/25 (“Gypsy”)
• Smetana: Trio in g minor
• Intermission
• Beethoven: Piano Trio in E flat, Op. 70, No.2

“Glowing reports hold true. The Trio con Brio Copenhagen clearly occupies a lofty perch in today’s musical scene.” – Washington Post, 2013

Trio con Brio Copenhagen has throughout their career been hailed by press and audiences for their “unique sound and unity of interpretation” —Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany.

Founded in Vienna in 1999 with the concept of pairs coming together, the two Korean sisters and Soo-Kyung and Jens (who is married to Soo-Kyung) have since then been exploring the piano trio repertoire with freshness and curiosity as well as with respect and reflection. In particular they have been gaining a reputation for the freshness of their approach to the core repertoire: “works by Beethoven, Schubert and Brahms are transformed in their hands into the alive-and-kicking music of today” —Esben Tange, editor at DR P2.

Visit trioconbrio.dk for more information.

at Chrysler Museum of Art

• Mozart: Quartet No.14 in G, K.387
• Mendelssohn: Quartet No. 4 in e minor, Op. 44 No. 2
• Intermission
• Schumann: Quartet in A, Op. 41, No. 3

The Minguet Quartet, founded in 1988, is one of the most internationally sought-after string quartets today and gives guest performances in all the great concert halls of the world. The passionate and intelligent interpretations of the Minguet Quartet always ensure inspiring listening experiences – “for the joy in sound and expression with which the ensemble makes the works speak enlivens even the smallest detail”. (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

The namesake of the Quartet is Pablo Minguet, a Spanish philosopher of the 18th century who attempted, in his writings, to facilitate access to the fine arts for all sectors of the population – and this idea is a chief artistic concern of the Minguet Quartet.

Visit www.minguet.de for more information.

at Chrysler Museum of Art

• Mendelssohn: Quartet in A, Op. 13
• Shostakovich: Quartet No. 8 in c minor, Op. 110
• Intermission
• Beethoven: Quartet in a minor, Op. 132

Renowned for bringing fresh excitement to traditional string quartet repertoire as well as for creating insightful interpretations of new music, the Chiara String Quartet (Rebecca Fischer and Hyeyung Julie Yoon, violins; Jonah Sirota, viola; Gregory Beaver, cello) captivates its audiences throughout the country. The Chiara has established itself as among America’s most respected ensembles, lauded for its “highly virtuosic, edge-of-the-seat playing” (The Boston Globe). They are currently Hixson-Lied Artists-in-Residence at the Glenn Korff School of Music at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and were the Blodgett Artists-in-Residence at Harvard University from 2008- 2014. For the 2015-2016 season, the Chiara will be the quartet-in-residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Chiara (key-ARE-uh) is an Italian word, meaning “clear, pure, or light.” www.chiaraquartet.com

at Chrysler Museum of Art

• Faure: Piano Trio in d minor, Op. 120
• Mendelssohn: Piano Trio in c minor, Op. 66
• Intermission
• Schubert: Trio in B-flat, Op. 99

Combining the talents of three award-winning soloists, the Weiss-Kaplan-Stumpf Trio brings to each performance its distinctive fusion of authority and experience, energy, and passion. These three musicians comprise an ensemble that embraces the music of the future while offering fresh insights into three centuries of masterworks.

Hailed by The New York Times as “Three strong voices, locked in sequence,” the Trio was originally founded in 2001, and was joined in 2014 by the distinguished cellist Peter Stumpf. The Trio has presented concerts throughout the US, Europe and the Middle East, with multiple appearances at The Kennedy Center, Wigmore Hall, Baltimore’s Shriver Hall, Princeton, UCLA, Indiana and Oxford Universities, Tel-Aviv Museum, and for the Chamber Music Societies of Edinburgh, Santander, Pasadena, Phoenix, Cincinnati, Salt Lake City and Tucson, among others.

Learn more here: www.weiss-kaplan-stumpf-trio.com

at Chrysler Museum of Art

• Smetana: Quartet No. 1 in e minor (“From My Life”)
• Prokofiev:  Quartet No.2 in F, Op. 92
• Intermission
• Beethoven:  Quartet in F, Op. 59, No. 2

Since its success at the ARD International Competition in 2012, at which the Armida Quartet took First Prize, the Audience Prize and six other special awards, the career of the young Berlin string quartet has developed sensationally.

Founded in Berlin in 2006, the quartet took its name from an opera by Haydn, the “father of the string quartet”. Still receiving the tutelage of Rainer Schmidt (Hagen Quartet) and Reinhard Goebel, the ensemble has also studied with members of the Artemis Quartet for several years.

Learn more here: armidaquartett.com