CARNEGIE HALL PRESENTS
Cancelled: Castalian String Quartet
Part of: Distinctive Debuts
Performers
Castalian String Quartet
·· Sini Simonen, Violin
·· Daniel Roberts, Violin
·· Charlotte Bonneton, Viola
·· Christopher Graves, Cello
Program
HAYDN String Quartet in F Major, Op. 77, No. 2
DUTILLEUX Ainsi la nuit
SCHUMANN String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 41, No. 1
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
Distinctive Debuts is supported by endowment gifts from The Lizabeth and Frank Newman Charitable Foundation and the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF).
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 F Major, Op. 77, No. 2, “Lobkowitz”
Prolific and endlessly imaginative, Haydn virtually created the string quartet as we know it. The second of his two Op. 77 quartets—contemporary with Beethoven’s early Op. 18 quartets—demonstrates his mature mastery of the medium that Beethoven would develop in new and unforeseen ways. Indeed, many people regard the F-Major Quartet as Haydn’s crowning achievement.
DUTILLEUX Ainsi la nuit
Written for the Juilliard String Quartet, which gave the work’s American premiere in 1978, Dutilleux’s first and only string quartet is recognized as a modern masterwork. Attuned to a wide range of stimuli—literary and artistic as well as musical—the late French composer conjured a dreamlike, unstable soundscape that reflects his innovative approach to harmony, form, sonority, and temporal organization.
SCHUMANN String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 41, No. 1
Schumann—not unlike Beethoven—took pride in being a loner. “I feel that my path is fairly solitary,” he once wrote. “No acclaiming crowd inspires me to fresh effort, but I keep my eyes fixed on my great examples, Bach and Beethoven, whose far-off images give unfailing help and encouragement.” The influence of both composers can be heard in Schumann’s A-Minor Quartet, which tempers muscular Romanticism with Classical restraint.
Bios
Castalian String Quartet
The Castalian String Quartet received the inaugural Merito String Quartet Award and Valentin Erben Prize—as well as a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship—in 2018. Over the past year, the quartet has given North American debut recitals at Lincoln Center, Middlebury College in Vermont, Salle Bourgie in Montreal, and The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, as well as the Vancouver Recital Society and Banff International String Quartet Festival. Additional highlights of the 2018–2019 season included a return to the Aldeburgh Festival, a performance of Haydn’s complete Op. 76 quartets at London’s Wigmore Hall (recorded for future release on the Wigmore Hall Live label), and recitals at Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Paris’s Auditorium du Louvre, Brussels’s Flagey, and the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.
During the 2019–2020 season, the quartet performs a Brahms and Schumann chamber music cycle at Wigmore Hall, collaborating with Stephen Hough, Cédric Tiberghien, Michael Collins, Nils Mönkemeyer, Isabel Charisius, and Ursula Smith, and participates in the Impresariat Simmenauer International Beethoven Cycle. In addition to return visits to Israel, the quartet also performs across Europe, giving recitals at Paris’s Philharmonie, Fertőd’s Esterházy Palace, and the Heidelberger-Frühling, Rheingau, Mosel, and Dresden music festivals.
The Castalian String Quartet’s other European highlights include the Hamburg Chamber Music Series, International Music Festival Goslar-Harz, Hitzacker Summer Music Festival, The Queille Festival, Grunelius-Konzerte “Quartetaffairs” series in Frankfurt (broadcast by NDR), and Conques, La Lumière du Roman in France. Appearances in the United Kingdom include the music festivals in Bath, Cheltenham, East Neuk, North Norfolk, Peasmarsh, and Winchester. The quartet has also toured to China and Colombia, and been the resident ensemble at the Esbjerg International Chamber Music Festival in Denmark and Festival Musique d’été à Suzette in France. Collaborators include Aleksandar Madžar, Alasdair Beatson, Simon Rowland-Jones, Daniel Lebhardt, and Olivier Stankiewicz, among others.
Formed in 2011, the Castalian String Quartet studied with Oliver Wille of the Kuss Quartet at Hanover’s Hochschule für Musik, Theater, und Medien, from which the quartet members graduated with master’s degrees. The quartet has also received coaching from Simon Rowland-Jones, David Waterman, and Isabel Charisius. Awards include first prize at the 2015 Lyon International Chamber Music Competition and third prize at the 2016 Banff International String Quartet Competition. The quartet was selected by the Young Classical Artists Trust (YCAT) in 2016.