CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Doric String Quartet
Part of: Quartets Plus
Performers
Doric String Quartet
·· Alex Redington, Violin
·· Ying Xue, Violin
·· Hélène Clément, Viola
·· John Myerscough, Cello
Program
HAYDN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 33, No. 2, "Joke"
BRETT DEAN String Quartet No. 3, "Hidden Agendas" (US Premiere, co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall)
SCHUBERT String Quartet in G Major, D. 887
Event Duration
The printed program will last approximately two hours, including one 20-minute intermission.Salon Encores
Get together with people who love music after this Weill Recital Hall concert for a free drink and discussion with the evening's musicians.
Learn More
Support for the 125 Commissions Project is provided by members of Carnegie Hall's Composer Club.
In honor of the centenary of his birth, Carnegie Hall’s 2019–2020 season is dedicated to the memory of Isaac Stern in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to Carnegie Hall, arts advocacy, and the field of music.
At a Glance
HAYDN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 33, No. 2, “Joke”
Prolific and endlessly imaginative, Haydn virtually invented the string quartet as we know it. In the democratic spirit of the Enlightenment, he gradually worked out a style in which all four instruments were more or less equal partners, thus laying the foundation for the carefully balanced quartets of Mozart and Beethoven. Haydn’s chamber-music style is compounded of elegance and humor, both of which are on display in the “Joke” Quartet, with its radiant slow movement and whimsical Finale.
BRETT DEAN String Quartet No. 3, “Hidden Agendas”
Brett Dean’s String Quartet No. 3 was written specifically for the Doric String Quartet. The work uses a range of sounds and moods, both unified and fractured, to explore what Dean describes as the “strangely fascinating and invariably unsettling political climate of extreme personalities, Twitter-outrage, groupthink, and other challenges to the democratic process in which we seem to find ourselves as we enter the 2020s.”
SCHUBERT String Quartet in G Major, D. 887
In the mid-1820s, as illness and financial trouble started to interfere in his life, Schubert found compositional motivation in the idea of writing a “grand symphony” on the scale of Beethoven’s Ninth. Although that ambitious project never came to fruition, his last three quartets—the G-Major Quartet of 1826 and the quartets in A minor (“Rosamunde”) and D minor (“Death and the Maiden”), both written in 1824—were clearly conceived on a symphonic scale.
Bios
Doric String Quartet
Firmly established as one of the leading quartets of its generation, the Doric String Quartet won the 2008 Osaka International Chamber Music Competition in Japan and earned second prize at the Premio Paolo Borciani International String Quartet Competition in Italy.
A highlight of the quartet’s 2019–2020 season is the new piece written for the ensemble by Brett Dean. String Quartet No. 3, “Hidden Agendas,” received its world premiere in 2019 and was co-commissioned for the Doric by Musica Viva Australia, Konzerthaus Berlin, Carnegie Hall, String Quartet Biennale Amsterdam, Edinburgh International Festival, and West Cork Chamber Music Festival. The work has its national premieres across 2019 and 2020. Other highlights of the current season include a tour of Japan, as well as tours of the US, Israel, and Europe.
Since 2010, the Doric has recorded exclusively for Chandos Records, with releases covering repertoire that ranges from Schumann to Korngold and Walton, as well as works for string quartet and orchestra that include Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro and John Adams’s Absolute Jest. The Doric’s benchmark recording of the complete Britten string quartets was released in 2019 and garnered glittering reviews across the board. Recorded at Snape Maltings Concert Hall in conjunction with a series of performances at the Britten Weekend celebrations, the disc was named Album of the Week by The Sunday Times, Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, and saw the Doric praised in BBC Music Magazine for its “extraordinary affinity” with Britten’s music. The musicians’ ongoing commitment to Haydn has so far seen them record the complete Op. 20, Op. 76, and Op. 64 quartets, with the recordings attracting acclaim that has included Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, Choc du Mois in Classica, and the shortlist for a Gramophone Award. Future releases include quartets by Mendelssohn and the complete Haydn Op. 33 quartets.
The Doric String Quartet was founded in 1998. In 2015, the quartet was appointed Teaching Quartet in Association at the Royal Academy of Music in London. Hélène Clément plays the 1843 Giussani viola, generously on loan from the Britten-Pears Foundation, and previously owned by Frank Bridge and Benjamin Britten.