Brentano String Quartet

Thursday, December 1, 2022 7:30 PM Zankel Hall

Brentano String Quartet by Jürgen Frank

“An ensemble of exceptional insight” (The Telegraph) and the “talk of the chamber music community” (Kansas City Star), the Brentano String Quartet performs masterworks with reverence and, with an admirable balance of creativity and restraint, achieves the “marvelous feat of bringing novel qualities to standard repertoire” (Classical Source). In its return to Zankel Hall, the quartet performs a piece by Haydn, the “father of the string quartet”; Fanny Mendelssohn’s wonderful, sole composition for string quartet; and an idiosyncratic Bartók quartet that demands attention.

Part of: Carnegie Hall Live on WQXR

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Performers

Brentano String Quartet
·· Mark Steinberg, Violin
·· Serena Canin, Violin
·· Misha Amory, Viola
·· Nina Lee, Cello

Program

HAYDN String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 33, No. 4

BARTÓK String Quartet No. 5

FANNY MENDELSSOHN String Quartet in E-flat Major

Event Duration

The printed program will last approximately 90 minutes, including one 20-minute intermission.

View Program Notes

Listen on WQXR.

At a Glance

HAYDN String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 33, No. 4

Prolific and endlessly imaginative, Haydn virtually invented the string quartet as we know it. A child of the Enlightenment, he developed a new style in which all four instruments were more or less equal partners, in contrast to the top-heavy part writing that characterized the instrumental chamber music of the Baroque period. Haydn’s chamber music is a mix of elegance and humor, both of which are on display in the fourth of the so-called “Russian” Quartets, Op. 33.

BARTÓK String Quartet No. 5

The fifth of Bartók’s six string quartets was commissioned by his American patron Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge and had its first performance in Washington, DC, in 1935. Laid out in five movements—three predominantly fast and two slow—the work is notable for its rhythmic verve, richly imaginative tonal effects, and sturdy, arch-like construction.

MENDELSSOHN HENSEL String Quartet in E-flat Major

Born into a prominent German Jewish family and married to a painter on the royal payroll, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel unveiled most of her music at soirées in the privacy of their Berlin home—after first seeking the approval of her younger brother, Felix Mendelssohn. The 1834 String Quartet is partly based on a piano sonata that Hensel had started and abandoned five years earlier. Written in the shadow of Beethoven’s late quartets, it’s one of her most ambitious large-scale works.

Bios