Auryn Quartet

San Jose Chamber Music Society

MUSIC

Beethoven’s 16 string quartets are regarded as one of the greatest achievements and experiences of human creative expression and imagination. Over three seasons we’ll bring you the entire cycle - two concerts per season, most with an early, a middle, and a late period quartet.

Beethoven wrote string quartets during each of his three style periods. In the first period, the six quartets, Op.18, of 1798-1800 already demonstrate his mastery of the Classical style he inherited and learned from Haydn and Mozart. The middle period “Heroic” quartets [especially Op.59 Rasumovskys] from 1806 and 1809 reveal his revolutionary enlarged conception of the quartet. In the late quartets of 1824-26 Beethoven, now totally deaf, explored new worlds of sound that both challenged and delighted his critics and audiences.

ARTISTS

Now 31 years with the original personnel, the sought-after, worldtouring Auryn Quartet has performed the Beethoven cycle on major concert series throughout Europe and the U.S. including Berlin, London and Washington, D.C. Their Beethoven quartet cycle recording won the 2004 Classical Internet Award, and Gramophone’s review of Vols. III and IV said: “There is no shortage of great and famous Beethoven cycles, but there are no performances such as these. For me, this is now the set to beat.”

Their 14 CD recording of all Haydn’s 68 string quartets won the 2011 German Music Critics’ Prize and the 2009 Echo Klassik Prize.

“European tradition that blends elegance of sound with seamless phrasing and clarity of detail.” – The Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Pre-concert talk at 6:15pm by Dr. Bill Meredith

Free parking in City garage across from Trianon concert hall