Colorado String Quartet Hosts Pre-Concert Talk 10/27

The Colorado String Quartet, the first female quartet to gain international stature and first to perform the full cycle of Beethoven quartets in North America and Europe, will play an all-Beethoven program Thursday, Oct. 27, at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts.

The Colorado took hold of the world music scene almost three decades ago with back-to-back wins of the First Banff International String Quartet Competition and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award. Since then, it has played more than 1,200 concerts worldwide, appealing alike to sophisticated audiences and children of school age.

The quartet is composed of Julie Rosenfeld and D. Lydia Redding on violins, Marka Gustavsson on viola and Katie Schlaikjer on cello. Rosenfeld and Schlaikjer are on faculty in the UConn Music Department.

Violinists Rosenfeld and Redding will give insights into the Beethoven quartets at a pre-concert talk at 6:45 p.m.

The quartet will play the String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 18, Beethoven's first energetic burst toward the string quartet, program notes avow. With its cross-cutting rhythms, its Scherzo movement has been called "the first piece of jazz," and the melancholy Adagio at the opening of the finale bears markings for it to be performed "with the greatest delicacy."

The "Serioso" Quartet in F minor, Op. 95, second on the program, reflects a tense period when Beethoven was beset by his personal problems - finances, deafness and family matters.

And finally, the Quartet in A Minor, Op. 132, draws from Beethoven's later life, a time of intense suffering. Echoing the composer's real life experience, the piece moves through transcendental difficulties in rhythm, ensemble playing and pure endurance, according to program notes.

Of the ensemble's handling of the late Beethoven quartets, a 2008 review in Fanfare Magazine, said "Colorado plunges the musical scalpel in till Beethoven's very soul is laid bare. The range of colors they discover ... simply does not exist in others' recordings."

Colorado's recording of the Beethoven quartets is available on the Parnassus label. Other of their recordings feature the quartet literature of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Haydn and contemporary composers.

The Colorado players are known for their teaching prowess as well as performance. They were Quartet-in-Residence at Bard College until 2009 and have done residencies at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, The New School in Philadelphia, Swarthmore and Skidmore Colleges and Amherst College. They have given master classes at prestigious schools, such as The Eastman School of Music, Northwestern University and The Banff Centre.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Road on the UConn campus in Storrs. Tickets are $30 and $28, with some discounts. For tickets and information, call the Box Office 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon-Fri at 860.486.4226, or order online at: jorgensen.uconn.edu. Free, convenient parking is available across the street in the North Garage.