Perhaps no composer has shaken Western music to its core more than Arnold Schoenberg, and Spektral Quartet’s 2017-18 season offers a four-concert retrospective tracing the birth of Modernism from hyper-Romantic 19th-Century roots all the way through to bright new voices of today. Schoenberg's string quartets will interact with the composer’s influences Johannes Brahms and Franz Schubert, and his contemporaries Anton Webern, Béla Bartók and Samuel Barber. Central to the project is a major new Koussevitsky Prize commission with composer/conductor luminary David Fulmer. Each program is thoughtfully curated to illuminate the evolution of Schoenberg’s style: his fearless innovations grounded in the Austro-Germanic canon, his progressive modes of musical rhetoric, and his disruptive influence on future generations. Evolution, Tradition, Influence provides a map for the listener, through the uncharted waters of musical revolution, with Schoenberg as our brilliant hero and freedom of expression our manifesto.

We offer flexible programming with this project. These sample programs illustrate some possibilities:

Roots Music

Johannes Brahms: String Quartet in A minor, Op. 51

Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet #1

Air From Another Planet

Anton Webern: Langsamer Satz

Béla Bartók: String Quartet No 1

Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet No 2

Against the Grain

Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet No 3

Samuel Barber: String Quartet in B minor, Op 11

Portrait of an Artist

Arnold Schoenberg: String Quartet No. 4

David Fulmer: verse, verses