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Brentano Quartet performs Haydn String Quartet Op. 76, No. 2
News
Brentano String Quartet gets the "Gramophone Choice" treatment!
Gramophone has selected the Brentano Quartet's Beethoven recording as one of the month's 12 best in its March 2012 issue. This reinforces what is already common knowledge: the Brentano Quartet is simply among today's finest!
The Brentano String Quartet's long awaited recording of late Beethoven quartets is here! It will be available stateside on Oct. 11, 2011.
Fragments Update: the pieces are assembled! Watch the latest here:
Van Cliburn Competition Welcomes Brentano Quartet
The Brentano Quartet has been invited to the Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, which will take place May 24–June 9, 2013 at Fort Worth’s Bass Performance Hall. Since its inception in 1962, the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition has been committed to showcasing both the extraordinary talent of its competitors in recital performance as well as their ability to successfully and beautifully collaborate with other musicians. During the Semifinal Round, each pianist performs a quintet with an outstanding chamber ensemble—in this case, the Brentano Quartet!.
Fragments….coming together!
The Brentano Quartet are assembling a program called “Fragments” which takes as its model the highly successful project they organized nearly 10 years ago around Bach’s “Art of Fuge”.
The concept for “Fragments”, as described by Mark Steinberg, is “to commission several composers to write pieces related to, either finishing or accompanying, fragmentary works by earlier composers. We'll wind up with a full-length program that will feature the incomplete works along with the newly written pieces.” The Fragments are works by Dufay, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Shostakovich. The participating composers are Charles Wuorinen, Sofia Gubaidulina, John Harbison, Vijay Iyer, Bruce Adolphe, and Stephen Hartke.
As with “Art of Fuge”, the Brentanos have built a consortium of presenters (12 so far) from around the country, and these presenters will enjoy the opportunity to present the project during 2011/12. “Fragments” will premiere in summer, 2011, and we are all looking forward to hear what transpires!
Brentano Quartet Takes Berkeley
The quartet's recent visit to Cal Performances was an outstanding success, according to Michelle Dulak Thomson's review in The San Francisco Classical Voice:
" And everywhere there was that minutely focused, almost alarming sense of alertness to line and to color. The Brentanos' lines are long and unerringly shaped, and their colors are intense without being brash.... what the Brentanos do is something beyond exceptional blend, balance, intonation, and ensemble; they seem to act in concert like the muscles of a limb, pulling in various directions yet with a single intent, accomplished in a single gesture. " Read the full review
The Brentano Quartet received a glowing review in the Louisville Courier-Journal following their performance at University of Louisville School of Music's Comstock Hall:
"It's hard to communicate the sheer exuberance of these four artists, and the remarkable insight and discipline they brought to works that demanded impeccable musicianship.... Nobody coming out of Comstock could doubt they'd heard something vivid and vital."
The New York Times reported that the Brentano Quartet “gave an excitingly restless and imaginative account of the Schoenberg string quartet” last month in ‘The Blue Rider' in Performance,” a fascinating multimedia project presented at Columbia University's Miller Theatre. “The Blue Rider” was the name of a pre-World War I artistic movement that essentially led to abstract modern art and a friendship between the painter Wassily Kandinsky and the composer Arnold Schoenberg. Produced in collaboration with the Guggenheim Museum's Works & Process series, the performance project was conceived and directed by the pianist Sarah Rothenberg. The program presented works by Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, and others in conjunction with video images from Kandinsky's paintings.
Press Highlights
“Such was their ferocity on Saturday night that the instruments almost burst into flames….Make no mistake: the Brentanos are a magnificent string quartet….This was wonderful, selfless music making.” — The Times (London)
“Something special…. Their music making is private, delicate and fresh, but by its very intimacy and importance it seizes attention.”
— The New York Times“A collaboration of intense cohesion, which allowed the music to soar and sing as if it were being performed for the first time.”
— Cleveland Plain Dealer“The overall effect wasn't that the group was playing music, but releasing it.”
— Philadelphia Inquirer“A hair-raising level of focus and intensity...Whew!”
— Toronto Star