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Announcing a Chamber Music Workshop and Retreat
Announcing a Chamber Music Workshop & Retreat With the Alexander String Quartet String Quartet masterpieces of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven September 7-10, 2017 Ratna Ling Retreat Center (Sonoma County, CA) The Apollo Academy for Health and Humanism The Apollo Academy for Health and Humanism has put together a unique weekend: A chamber music intensive (for…
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Bartók String Quartet No. 6
One of the paramount qualities of the Bartók quartets as a series is that—like Beethoven’s—they exemplify growth. The problems and possibilities of string quartet writing are not of the kind that imply a single solution, no matter how perfect, nor a single form, no matter how refined. With the composition of the Sixth Quartet, then,…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 6 in G Major, Opus 101
Shostakovich’s sudden re-marriage in the summer of 1956 caught even his closest friends by surprise. His first wife, the physicist Nina Varzar, had died suddenly in December 1954, and eighteen months later the shy composer impulsively proposed to a pretty young party official, Margarita Kainova. She just as impulsively accepted, and they were married in…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 5 in B-flat Major, Opus 92
Shostakovich wrote his Fifth String Quartet in the fall of 1952, but it remained in manuscript, unperformed, for over a year—and for very good reasons. Not only were these some of the darkest years of the Cold War, they were also the paranoid final years of Stalin’s repressive regime. Four years earlier, at the 1948…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 4 in D Major, Opus 83
The Soviet crackdown on composers in February 1948 remains, over half a century later, one of the most devastating examples of government interference and censorship in history. Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Miaskovsky, and others were excoriated for their “formalistic distortions and anti-democratic tendencies” and for writing “confused, neuropathological combinations which transform music into cacophony.” These composers…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Opus 73
The Third String Quartet was Shostakovich’s only composition during the year 1946. He dedicated it to the members of the Beethoven Quartet, who gave the first performance in Moscow on their namesake’s 176th birthday, December 16, 1946. The mention of Beethoven is apt, for many observers have felt that this quartet, particularly in its heartfelt…
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Shostakovich Quartet No. 2, in A Major, Op. 68
The works Shostakovich composed during World War II—or, as the Russians call it, The Great Patriotic War—form a distinct chapter in his output. These include the wartime music one might expect—marches, choruses, and even settings of songs of Russia’s allies (including, in 1943, an arrangement of When Johnny Comes Marching Home)—but Shostakovich made his major…
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Shostakovich String Quartet No. 1, Op. 49
Shostakovich wrote his String Quartet No. 1 during a defining interlude in his career. He had achieved international fame at age 20 with his First Symphony, and his 1934 opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District— with its explicit sexual content and sordid events—had reinforced that reputation during performances as far away as Cleveland, London,…
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New Year Reflections
Once again another year has flown by for the Alexander String Quartet. 2016 has been another great year spanning the end of 35th and into our 36th seasons. We spent the actual anniversary of our first concert (August 4th) spread from pillar to post. Fred was in Boston visiting family, Paul was keeping the home…
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2016 Starts Beethoven: Before, During and After
2016 Gets Rolling With a New ASQ and Robert Greenberg Series — Beethoven: Before, During and After
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Robert Greenberg’s “Invasive Species” — Video
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KALW Interviews Robert Greenberg
Yesterday, we told you about KALW’s upcoming broadcast of our San Francisco Performances, “Explorations in Music: Mozart in Vienna” series, and today we get to share an interview KALW did with Robert Greenberg about the Mozart in Vienna Series: Mozart is often thought of as a “nice” composer, maybe even boring to the uninitiated. Do…
