Takács Quartet December 3, 2010

Beautiful and anguished, the late quartets of Schubert and Bartók are among the repertoire’s towering works. Interpreted by the Takács Quartet, one of the world’s finest exponents of this music and an ensemble of surpassing musical intelligence, this demanding program bears a weighty and emotional through-line. Schubert’s unfinished twelfth quartet remained orphaned as a single movement (Quartettsatz). However, it gave way to important final works, notably Death and the Maiden. Written in the years prior to Schubert’s untimely death at the age of 31, this quartet quotes thematic material from the composer’s eponymous earlier lied (art song), referencing text that embodies a struggle to ward off death. And in turn, American composer Daniel Kellogg has crafted a companion work based upon Schubert’s. Bartók’s somber sixth and final quartet, written at the start of World War II, was the last work composed in his native Hungary shortly before he departed for the United States.

Program
Schubert: Quartettsatz in C minor, D 703; Bartók: String Quartet
No. 6, Sz. 114; Daniel Kellogg: Soft Sleep Shall Contain You; Schubert: String
Quartet No. 14 in D minor, Death and the Maiden

Official Website: http://livelyarts.stanford.edu/event.php?code=TAKA