Performances
September 20-22
*There are two performances each evening*
Performance #1: 6:00 - 8:30 PM
Reception - 6:00 - 7:00 PM
Walk/Trolley to the Catacombs - 7:00 - 7:30 PM
Show - 7:30 - 8:30 PM
Performance #2: 7:30 - 10:00 PM
Reception - 7:30 - 8:30 PM
Walk/Trolley to the Catacombs - 8:30 - 9:00 PM
Show - 9:00 - 10:00 PM
Each performance includes an hourlong spirits tasting, followed by a twilight walk through the cemetery to the Catacombs.
Composed in the final years before his death, Beethoven's String Quartet Opus 130 remains to this day one of the most mysterious and revelatory works ever set to score. Beethoven had been deaf for decades when he wrote it, and these six movements conjure a sound world unlike anything heard before or since, speaking to the limitless reaches of human emotion, from joy to despair, the sacred to the profane, and everything in between. The beating heart of the piece is the slow movement, which caused Beethoven himself to declare "that he had composed this Cavatina truly in the tears of melancholy." We’ll finish the work as Beethoven originally intended, with his Grosse Fugue finale that exists at the edges of madness and incomprehensibility, hurtling between chaos and order in one of music’s most extraordinary expressions.
For these singular performances, we are lucky enough to be graced by the glory of the Calidore Quartet - four of today's leading musicians who "speak, breathe, think and feel as one” (Washington Post), and who stand among the world's greatest interpreters of Beethoven's music.
Beethoven’s staggering string quartet offers us a musical vision of the space between emotion and expression.
I. Adagio, ma non troppo – Allegro
II. Presto
III. Andante con moto, ma non troppo.
IV. Alla danza tedesca.
V. Cavatina.
VI. Große Fuge
Performances of the Calidore String Quartet are renowned for their “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” (New York Times). Their unique “balance of intellect and expression” (Los Angeles Times) is complemented by the feeling that “four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one” (Washington Post). After over a decade of performances and residencies in the world’s most esteemed venues and festivals, the release of numerous critically acclaimed recordings and lauded with significant awards, the Calidore String Quartet is recognized as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast repertory; from the cycles of quartets by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to works of celebrated contemporary voices like Grygory Kurtag, Jörg Widmann and Caroline Shaw.