Takács Quartet

A deeply felt emotional expressivity binds these works from the Classical, Romantic, and 20th-century worlds. In Haydn’s quartet, the second-movement Largo is the work’s poetic soul—a profoundly beautiful meditation. Brahms, too, looks inward in his String Sextet in G Major with a five-note theme whose pitches spell the name of a lost love in an outpouring of uncommon beauty and wistful nostalgia, while Shostakovich mourns a lost friend with gripping music of uncompromising power and somber beauty in his String Quartet No. 11.

Quatuor Ebène

“This is a genre made particularly famous by Beethoven, so that anyone who is not Beethoven is scared stiff of it,” wrote Gabriel Fauré of the string quartet. Fauré’s String Quartet in E Minor—his final work—borrows from an unfinished youthful violin concerto and fearlessly explores new thematic and harmonic territory. Beethoven’s turbulent and compelling “Razumovsky” Quartet takes some bold steps as well, including quotations from a Russian folk tune. Dutilleux’s daring Ainsi la nuit (Thus the Night) has an impressionistic quality befitting its nocturnal theme with each of its seven movements making striking demands of each player.

Laureates of the Sphinx Competition

The Detroit-based Sphinx Organization is dedicated to transforming lives through the power of diversity in the arts. Featuring three of the nation’s leading black and Latino artists—who are also recent winners of the Sphinx Competition—this program includes dynamic solo and chamber works.