Chiara String Quartet – Bartók by Heart, Part II
Tickets
About the Artist
Wednesday, August 31st 7pm
The Chiara Quartet performs all six Bartók quartets by heart, a feat never attempted before. Bartók’s quartets highlight an incredible life in music, from his journey uncovering rare folk music of Europe and Northern Africa to his final exodus from Hungary to America on the eve of World War II. This cycle brings his amazing, colorful works to life in vivid performances.
Hungarian composer Béla Bartók sought to capture the essence of folk music in his string quartets, and in his travels across Europe and North Africa, he documented hundreds of hours of folk music, meticulously transcribing it. Much of this music had never before been written down, and had instead been passed down from generation to generation in an oral tradition.
Of the process of recording Bartók’s string quartets from memory, Chiara cellist Gregory Beaver says, “When we began working on memorizing the Bartók quartets, we found that Bartók’s process worked in reverse almost magically. Many of the devilishly difficult passages in his music became natural when performed without printed music. Through the memorization process, we are able to return Bartók’s music to the realm of the unrecorded folk music he so lovingly captured. We hope that by sharing our performances, Bartók’s remarkable music continues its journey from ear to ear and generation to generation just as the folk music that inspired it.”
Program
Bartók: String Quartet No. 2
Bartók: String Quartet No. 4
Bartók: String Quartet No. 6
Chiara String Quartet
Renowned for bringing fresh excitement to traditional string quartet repertoire as well as for creating insightful interpretations of new music, the Chiara String Quartet captivates its audiences throughout the country. Lauded for its “highly virtuosic, edge-of-the-seat playing” (The Boston Globe), the quartet was the 2015-2016 quartet-in-residence at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Founded in 2000, the Chiara is moving forward by taking a cue from the past. Harkening back to a tradition that is centuries old and still common among soloists, the Chiara Quartet has adopted a new way of performing: from memory. The quartet’s latest album, Bartók by Heart, will be released by Azica Records on August 26, 2016. The 2-CD set includes Béla Bartók’s six string quartets, played entirely from memory. The album was produced by Alan Bise and recorded by Bruce Egre at Troy Savings Bank Music Hall in Troy, NY.
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