Saturday, January 19th kicks off the second program of our newest San Francisco Performances series “The String Quartet at a Time of War: Benjamin Britten and his Contemporaries.”
Alexander String Quartet and Robert Greenberg
Bartók: Quartet No. 6
Britten: Quartet No. 1
Saturday, January 19, 10:00am
Herbst Theatre
Tickets: www.sfperformances.org
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.