Coming Up This Week at the Met! Aizuri Quartet to Perform Works by Composers In Isolation And More!

This Week at the Metropolitan Museeum of Art: Aizuri Quartet Performs Works by Composers in Isolation and the Sight and Sound Series Returns with Schoenberg and Munch. See full details below!

Aizuri Quartet: Music and Isolation

Friday, December 1, 7 p.m., Vélez Blanco Patio

A program of music written by composers while they were separated from community for reasons that include political exile, physical or emotional trauma, and financial straits. The concert includes pieces written while the composer pursued vocation or employment-Hildegarde von Bingen's Columba Aspexit and Haydn's String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20 No. 2); a piece by Ludwig van Beethoven written while isolated through deafness-his Grosse Fuge Op. 133; a piece inspired by the experience of persecution because of political beliefs-Conlon Nancarrow's String Quartet No. 3 (1987); and several works by Carlo Gesualdo that came out of his experience of psychological trauma, all arranged for string quartet.

Aizuri Quartet is The Met's 2017-18 Quartet in Residence.

Tickets start at $75.

Sight and Sound Series: Schoenberg, Munch, and Expressionism

Leon Botstein and The Orchestra Now
Sunday, December 3, 2 p.m., Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium

Schoenberg's Erwartung (Expectation) and the artwork of Edvard Munch

At the climax of Schoenberg's compact operatic monodrama, a woman screams upon finding the dead body of her lover. The close connections between Schoenberg's score and Munch's symbolism extend beyond the composer's expressionist music. The composer was also a painter, heavily influenced by Munch. Presented in conjunction with Edvard Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed, on view at The Met Breuer November 15, 2017-February 4, 2018.