The Well-Tempered Ear
The Pro Arte Quartet plays the fourth installment of its FREE Beethoven string quartet cycle online TONIGHT at 7:30 CDT
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By Jacob Stockinger
The historic Pro Arte Quartet, in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Mead Witter School of Music, will perform the fourth installment of its FREE Beethoven string quartet cycle TONIGHT — Friday, Oct. 23 — at 7:30 p.m. CDT. (It should be posted for about a day, but will not be archived due to copyright considerations.)
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the live concert will take place online and will be live-streamed without an audience from the Mead Witter Foundation Concert Hall in the new Hamel Music Center.
You can stream it live from https://youtu.be/IhmNRNiI3RM
The whole series of concerts are part of the Pro Arte Quartet’s yearlong retrospective to celebrate the Beethoven Year. This December marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of the composer (below).
Members of the Pro Arte Quartet (below, in a photo by Rick Langer) are: David Perry and Suzanne Beia, violins; Sally Chisholm, viola; and Parry Karp, cello.
A pre-concert lecture by UW-Madison musicology Professor Charles Dill (below, in a photo by Katrin Talbot) starts at 7:30 p.m. CDT.
The program consists of one early and one late quartet: the string Quartet in C Minor, Op. 18 No. 4 (1798-1800), and you can hear the first movement played by the Dover Quartet in the YouTube video at the bottom; and the String Quartet in E-Flat Major, Op. 127 (1825).
The Pro Arte Quartet is one of the world’s most distinguished string quartets. Founded by conservatory students in Brussels in 1912, it became one of the most celebrated ensembles in Europe in the first half of the 20th century and was named Court Quartet to the Queen of Belgium.
Its world reputation blossomed in 1919 when the quartet (below, in 1928) began the first of many tours that enticed notable composers such as Bartok, Barber, Milhaud, Honegger, Martin and Casella to write new works for the ensemble.
The Pro Arte Quartet performs throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia and continues to champion both standard repertoire and new music.
Since being stranded in the U.S. when Belgium was invaded by Hitler and the Nazis in World War II, the group is an ensemble-in-residence at the Mead Witter School of Music and resident quartet of the Chazen Museum of Art.
The quartet, the longest active string quartet in the history of music, has performed at the White House and, during the centennial celebration, played for the King’s Counselor in Belgium.
Recent projects include the complete quartets of Bartok and Shostakovich and, in collaboration with the Orion and Emerson String Quartets, the complete quartets of Beethoven.
Regular chamber music collaborators that perform with Pro Arte include Samuel Rhodes and Nobuko Imai, viola; Bonnie Hampton, cello; and the late Leon Fleischer and Christopher Taylor, piano.
Together since 1995, the quartet has recorded works of Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Rhodes, Shapey, Sessions, Fennelly, Diesendruck, Lehrdahl and the centennial commissions.
For more information and background, go to: https://www.music.wisc.edu/event/pro-arte-quartet-beethoven-string-quartet-cycle-program-iv/
For more about the challenges and modifications – including wearing masks and social distancing — of doing the Beethoven cycle for the virtual online performances and about the other dates and programs in the cycle, go to: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/09/29/classical-music-uw-madisons-pro-arte-quartet-to-resume-its-free-beethoven-cycle-virtual-and-online-this-friday-night-with-two-other-programs-this-semester/
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Classical music: Juilliard String Quartet names a replacement for violist Samuel Rhodes who has played with the UW’s Pro Arte Quartet and who will retire at the end of this season. UW clarinetist Linda Bartley performs on Saturday night.
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REMINDER: Saturday night at 8 p.m. — NOT Friday night as first and mistakenly stated here — in Morphy Recital Hall, UW clarinetist Linda Bartley (below) will perform a FREE concert with Jeannie Yu, piano; and Sally Chisholm, viola. The program includes “Sonata in D” by Nino Rota; “Liquid Ebony” by Dana Wilson; “Cantilene” by Louis Cahuzac and “Scarlattiana” for Clarinet, Viola and Piano by Walter Mays. Also, at 8 p.m. tonight, Friday night, in Mills Hall, the Wisconsin Brass Quintet marks 40 years with a FREE concert. For details, see Thursday’s post.
By Jacob Stockinger
Perhaps the premiere name among American violists these days, especially for chamber music, is Samuel Rhodes (below, in a photo by Peter Schaaf).
Rhodes teaches viola, and heads the viola department, at the Juilliard School of Music, where he also has played in the award-winning Juilliard String Quartet since 1969. The influential and critically acclaimed quartet was founded in 1946. (Rhodes in on the far right.)
Rhodes has often been a guest artist with the University of Wisconsin’s Pro Arte String Quartet. Last year (below, Rhodes sitting second from right), during the celebration of the Pro Arte’s centennial, Rhodes sat in to play one of those sublime but underplayed Mozart String Quintets with two violas.
Members of the Pro Arte have always told The Ear not only how much they admired Rhodes’ playing but also how they found him a congenial colleague to work with. And so it seemed form the beautiful results one heard when they played together.
Rhodes will be replace in the quartet by British player Roger Tapping (below, in a photo by Susan Wilson), the current violist of the acclaimed Takacs String Quartet.
Here is a link to two stories, from Gramophone Magazine and The New York Times, about Tapping and Rhodes:
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/more-turnover-in-the-juilliard-string-quartet/
Here on YouTube is Samuel Rhodes playing and discussing Beethoven:
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