An extraordinary thing happens when we draw parallels between the works separated by decades or centuries: the unfamiliar becomes familiar, and enticing. This alchemy burns brightly in both directions: music written before our great-great-grandparents were born is vitalized in a new way when performed in dialogue with a piece published this month — and fresh, wet ink doesn’t sound so foreign when paired with a historic score that shares some of the same creative motivations.
How did this program come about?
First, there was our desire to see what Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Franz Schubert, and Samuel Adams had to say to one another. The most apparent connection appears with their use of transformation through repetition. There is a beautiful hypnosis in areas of each that set a distinctive mood, but in a way that allows the listener to bring their own experience to the landscape.
This is also a project born out of kinship. The Mendelssohn was originally intended for a concert featuring members of each of our families as our collaborators – an early COVID casualty. The Schubert was unanimously exciting to the quartet – four musicians in a relationship that might be more accurately described as a marriage – as we brainstormed exceptional pieces from the traditional repertoire that deserve more time on stage. And finally, our commissioning of Samuel Adams is the result of a friendship that deepened during Sam’s tenure as composer-in-residence for our hometown band, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
PROGRAM
String Quartet in E-flat Major (1834) – Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel
String Quartet No. 2, “Current” (2019) – Samuel Adams
String Quartet No. 13 in A minor, D. 804, "Rosamunde" (1824) – Franz Schubert
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