Passages

The first concert of the season in the Twentieth and Beyond series is entitled Passages and features works from the two most important string quartet cycles written in the 20th century. Dmitri Shostakovich and Béla Bartók wrote no fewer than 31 works for string quartet.

From the former, you will hear his Fourth Quartet, written during the Stalinist regime and premiered after Stalin’s death in 1953, and the First Quartet by the Hungarian Béla Bartók, whose three movements form an astonishing journey from despair to hope, from funeral dirge to Hungarian dance. To complete the program, the musicians will perform Quartet III by the Bulgarian-born French composer André Boucourechliev, a work written for the 1995 Évian International String Quartet Competition.

André Boucourechliev: Quartet No. 3

Dmitri Shostakovich: Quartet No. 4

Béla Bartók: Quartet No. 1, Opus 7