Performers
Location
About
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. Though its authorship remains uncertain, the piece offers a glimpse into 18th-century musical life. Haydn’s “Joke” Quartet (one of the Op. 33 quartets) follows. Mozart’s “Prussian” Quartet in B-flat major appears next. The Italian Serenade by Hugo Wolf brings lively charm, and the evening closes with Wynton Marsalis’s At the Octoroon Balls, a modern work drawing on jazz, blues, and dance rhythms.
Performers
- Calidore String Quartet
- Jeffrey Myers, violin
- Ryan Meehan, violin
- Jeremy Berry, viola
- Estelle Choi, cello
About the Calidore String Quartet
The Calidore String Quartet is recognized as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast chamber music repertory, from Beethoven and Mendelssohn to contemporary composers such as György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Caroline Shaw. The Los Angeles Times described the musicians as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep.” The New York Times noted the Quartet’s “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct,” and the Washington Post wrote that “four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one.”
Founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010, the quartet has won top prizes at major U.S. chamber music competitions (including Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs), the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, and the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. The Calidore has been a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and a recipient of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.
Recordings and projects mentioned in this program note include the Calidore’s ongoing recording of Beethoven’s complete String Quartets for Signum Records (Volume I, containing the late quartets, was released in 2023 and earned BBC Music Magazine’s Chamber Award in 2024). Their previous Signum recordings include Babel and Resilience.
Instrument details
Jeffrey Myers plays on a violin by Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, c. 1775, “Eisenberg,” owned by a private benefactor, and bows by Dominique Peccatte and Francois Tourte. Ryan Meehan plays a violin by Vincenzo Panormo, c.1775, and a bow by Joseph Henry. Jeremy Berry plays a viola by Umberto Muschietti, c.1903, and a bow by Pierre Simon. Estelle Choi plays a cello by Charles Jacquot, c.1830.