19 August 2012: Wu Quartet
The performers
Qian Wu and Edward Brenton violins, Matthew Kettle viola and Joe Zeitlin cello
Background
The quartet was founded in 2007. In 2011 it reached the semi-finals of the 2011 Beijing International String Quartet competition and won the ‘Artis Quartet Prize’ for the outstanding string quartet at the ISA Prague/Wien/Budapest Sommerakademie. The Wu have studied with members of the Artis, Alban Berg, Talich, Ysaye and Wihan Quartets, as well as with the Lindsays’ Peter Cropper and György Pauk. More recently they have built strong relationships with Johannes Meissl, Simon Rowland-Jones and Evgenia Ephstein (Aviv String Quartet), and are now studying with Hatto Beyerle (founding member of the Alban Berg Quartet).
The quartet came to Suffolk to play in Humphrey Burton’s ‘Simply Schubert’ weekend in 2011, returning to Snape for a residency with Simon Rowland-Jones and two concerts in the Jubilee Hall in March 2012 as part of Aldeburgh Music’s winter chamber music programme: click here for more details.
For more details about the players, click here to go to the Wu Quartet’s own website.
Playing at Cratfield
The concert is at 3pm on Sunday 19 August 2012.
Concert programme
Tippett, String quartet no 2 in F sharp (1941-1942)
Peteris Vasks (1946- ), String quartet no 2 (Summer Tunes) (1984)
INTERVAL
Schubert, String quartet in D minor (Death and the Maiden) D810 (1824)
About the programme
Tippett’s String quartet no 2 belongs to the intensely lyrical period of composition which led to his first opera The Midsummer Marriage (written 1946-1952, but not performed until 1955); it also reflects his love of complex rhythms and his study of Tudor composers. Contemporary Latvian composer Peteris Vasks has now written five string quartets (the most recent two for the Kronos Quartet – regular concertgoers to the winter Jubilee Hall series heard no 5 played in January 2012 by the Almandin Quartet). Vasks’ String quartet no 2 combines traditional tonal writing with dissonant and aleatory passages (some intended to imitate birdsong, reflecting his love of nature and environmental concerns). Schubert’s Death and the Maiden is one of the key works in the string quartet repertoire, dramatic and lyrical by turns; it has not been heard at Cratfield since the Emperor Quartet in 2000.
CDs
[not yet!]
Ticket availability (click here for the Tickets page)
£14.50: booking not yet open
£11: booking not yet open
£8: booking not yet open
Click here for a plan of the church, showing the location of seats at the different prices for 2012; the PDF file will either open in a new window or be downloaded to your computer, depending on your own browser settings or preferences.