After the successful Franz Schubert Saturday Morning Series presented by San Francisco Performances, the Alexander String Quartet and Robert Greenberg present a new Saturday Morning Series — The String Quartet at a Time of War: Benjamin Britten and His Contemporaries.
World War Two, which in Europe began in 1939 and ended in 1945, was the single most harrowing and devastating event of the twentieth century. Framed by the string quartets of Benjamin Britten, whose centennial will be celebrated in 2013, this series will explore works that reflect the broader European experience of the War years, as well as the period before the War (Concert One) and after the War (Concert Four). Along with Britten’s superb quartets, the series will feature some of the most important string quartets composed during the twentieth century, including quartets by the Czech composer Pavel Haas (who perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1944), Béla Bartók, William Walton, and Dmitri Shostakovich.
The String Quartet at a Time of War: Benjamin Britten and His Contemporaries
San Francisco Performances Inc.
Herbst Theatre
San Francisco, California
www.sfperformances.org
Saturdays at 10am
Program 1: Saturday, January 12 – 10:00am
The Gathering Storm
BRITTEN: Three Divertimenti for String Quartet (1933, rev. 1936)
HAAS: Quartet No. 3 (1938)