Event Concerts and Performances Apollon Musagète Quartet with Garrick Ohlsson, piano

“If Apollo had played the violin instead of the lyre, this is exactly how it would have sounded.” (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

The Apollon Musagète Quartet closes our opening weekend in dramatic fashion. The group’s repertoire includes the complete string quartets of Franz Schubert and a range of other composers, but the quartet maintains a special devotion to music by Polish composers including Chopin, Górecki, Panufnik, Palester, Penderecki, Lutosławski and Szymanowski. They have collaborated with a number of prominent artists, and are equally at home touring with Tori Amos or working with world-class pianists like Garrick Ohlsson. Ohlsson, known for his mastery of Chopin’s music and a vast array of concerti and music by other composers, joins Apollon Musagète for one of the great pieces of chamber music from the 20th century: Shostakovich’s piano quintet. Apollon Musagète’s inclusion of a lesser-known Schubert quartet alongside a late quartet by Penderecki is eye-opening, and with the addition of the Shostakovich quintet three composers not often mentioned in the same breath are musically linked.

Part of our celebration marking the 225th anniversary of Schubert’s birth.

Program
FRANZ SCHUBERT
String Quartet in D major, D. 94

KRZYSZTOF PENDERECKI
String Quartet no. 3, “Leaves of an Unwritten Diary”

DMITRY SHOSTAKOVICH
Piano Quintet in G minor, op. 57