New Esterhazy Quartet Plays Music Dedicated to Haydn May 13, 2011

Barefoot Chamber Concerts continues its mission to help you start the weekend right. This Friday evening concert series offers great music in a relaxed setting. The series is committed to musical excellence without the formality of the conventional concert setting. Concerts start at 6 p.m. and last 60-75 minutes without intermission. Light refreshments are available, and there will be ample time to move on to other evening entertainments.

On Friday May 13, 2011, Barefoot will present the New Esterhazy Quartet (Lisa Weiss, violin; Anthony Martin, viola; William Skeen, violoncello; and Kati Kyme, violin) playing a program of quartets "Dedicated to Haydn".

Joseph Haydn, a pioneer of the string quartet, the symphony, the string trio to name but a few of the forms he is said to have been the "father of" spent much of his working life in isolation from other composers, working for the Esterhazy family, a position where he had to wear livery and was expected to attend the family as they moved from one of their stately homes to another. He lived so much in isolation from the mainstream of European musical life that he was, as he said "forced to become original." The result was an astonishingly integrated 68 string quartets, which, when he was finally allowed to publish them, changed European musical culture radically.

The members of the New Esterhazy Quartet are celebrated for their complete Haydn cycle, and in this program they are branching out and looking at Haydn from a different perspective. What sort of quartet is dedicated to such a towering yet benign figure?

We'll all find out at the concert, when the gorgeous wooden acoustic of St. Mark's Episcopal Church Parish Hall will provide the perfect sound for the music.
Details at www.barefootchamberconcerts.com.

Official Website: http://barefootchamberconcerts.com