The Well-Tempered Ear

Classical music: This Friday night, Nov. 22, the UW-Madison’s Pro Arte Quartet begins its 14-month complete cycle of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets. Here are programs and information about the six concerts

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By Jacob Stockinger

As you might have already heard, 2020 is a Beethoven Year. Musicians are already marking the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827, below).

One of the big local events – unfolding over the next 14 months — is that the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s acclaimed Pro Arte Quartet will perform a complete, six-concert cycle of Beethoven’s 16 string quartets, which are considered to be a monumental milestone in chamber music and in the development of the genre.

They encompass the styles of Beethoven’s early, middle and late periods, and often served as an experimental laboratory for musical ideas he used on other works. Each of the Pro Arte’s programs wisely features works from different periods, which makes comparisons and differences easier to understand. (You can hear Beethoven biographer Jan Stafford discuss the late quartets in the YouTube video at the bottom.)

For more about Beethoven’s string quartets, go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:String_quartets_by_Ludwig_van_Beethoven

A Beethoven cycle is also what originally brought the Pro Arte Quartet from Belgium — where it was founded by students at the Royal Conservatory in 1912 — to Madison, where they performed it at the Wisconsin Union Theater in 1940. In fact, they were in the process of performing the cycle when they heard that their homeland of Belgium has been invaded by Hitler and the Nazis, and they could not go home.

Stranded here by World War II, they were offered a chance to be artists-in-residence at the UW-Madison. They accepted — and the quartet has remained here since, becoming the longest performing quartet in music history.

For more about the history of the Pro Arte (below, in 1928), go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/pro-arte-quartet/

Current members of the Pro Arte Quartet (below from left, in a photo by Rick Langer) are: David Perry and Suzanne Beia, violins; Sally Chisholm, viola; and Parry Karp, cello.

PROGRAM I: Friday, Nov. 22, 8 p.m. in Collins Recital Hall

String Quartet in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2 (1798-1800)

String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95 “Serioso” (1810)

String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Op. 130 (1825-6)

PROGRAM II: Friday, Feb. 28, 8 p.m., Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall

String Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1 (1798-1800)

String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 74 “Harp” (1809)

String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, Op. 131 (1826)

PROGRAM III: Thursday, April 16 (NOT April 23, as was mistakenly listed in a press release), 7:30 p.m., Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall

String Quartet in D Major, Op. 18, No. 3 (1798-1800)

String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 59, No. 2 (1806)

String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 127 (1825)

PROGRAM IV: Friday, Oct. 2, 2020, 8 p.m., Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall

String Quartet in A Major, Op. 18, No. 5 (1798-1800)

String Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18, No. 4 (1798-1800)

String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132 (1825)

PROGRAM V: Friday, Nov. 20, 2020, 8 p.m., Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall

String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6 (1798-1800)

String Quartet in F Major, Op. 135 (1826)

String Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3 (1806)

PROGRAM VI: Saturday, Jan. 30, 2021, 8 p.m., Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall

String Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1 (1806)

String Quartet in B-Flat Major, Op. 130 with the Great Fugue Finale, Op. 133 (1825)