Description

Beethoven opens his C major quartet, Op. 59 No. 3, in uncertainty, a slow introduction wandering far from home before the Allegro arrives like a door thrown open and the finale replies with a headlong fugue. Two decades later, in the year of Beethoven’s death, an eighteen-year-old Felix Mendelssohn fell in love and immersed himself in Beethoven’s late quartets, writing a small song called “Frage” in which a young man asks, “Ist es wahr?” (is it true?) that his beloved waits for him beneath the vines. He built an entire quartet around that question and closed it by letting the song return, an answer to the beloved and to the master who had taught him how to ask.

Program

Felix Mendelssohn String Quartet No. 2, Op. 13

Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet Op. 59, No. 3, “Razumovsky”

Artists

John Vaida, violin

Arthur Moeller, violin

Amy Iwazumi, viola

Erin Ellis, cello