Talk about an eleventh hour fix! Sandy was expecting to have to play Saturday morning’s concert on his regular cello – which happens also to be another superb Kuttner instrument from 1980. The Egger Quartet instruments are feted this season on their 25th anniversary. Made in 1987, most have traveled the world in their own right but typically, they have been reunited in San Francisco at least once every year where they have been featured collectively in performance by an array of some of the most celebrated quartets over their first quarter century.
The Alexander String Quartet has been most fortunate to have had the privilege and pleasure of playing the instruments regularly for more than five years, making several landmark recordings on the instruments in the process. Some of the ASQ’s student assistants and quartet fellowship ensembles have also performed on the instruments during that period, including the Afiara and more recently the Hausmann Quartets, in some cases as far away as China. What a relief, if not entirely surprising, that fitting an emergency new bridge set it all right again for Saturday morning’s concert and this exciting spring season!
The rest of the ASQ members all lined up Sunday appointments with Francis – (Burritos may be involved), to make other fine tuning adjustments to these exceptional instruments before Francis heads back to Europe for another four months.