The Lobster Cove String Quartet To Perform Live At Annisquam Village Church

The Lobster Cove String Quartet embarks on its third season with a performance at the Annisquam Village Church, Sunday, September 7 at 7:00pm.

The program's title, In Search of Lost Time, is a nod to the novel of the same name by Marcel Proust, and the ways memory, art, history, and inner life intertwine in the human experience.

The quartet is joined by guest clarinetist Bill Kirkley. The Brahms Clarinet Quintet anchors the program, alongside works from living composers Caroline Shaw and Kenji Bunch,as well as miniatures by Schumann and Gershwin.

Scott Moore, LCSQ violinist and Artist-in-Residence at the Village Church, writes: "We are all shaped profoundly by the past: the stories and relics we carry with us, and which we continue to discover as we move ever on into the present moment. We might look back with nostalgia, or else seek to learn from earlier lessons. We study the works of past masters, looking to them for inspiration as we try to make some kind of sense of our own experiences, searching for meaning or connection. We are moved by a work of art, and realize the artist was also a person on their own similar search. Brahms came out of compositional retirement to create the Clarinet Quintet: a piece only a master could write, whose autumnal tone and retrospective feeling are unmistakable. The music is quintessentially Romantic, quintessentially Brahms; yet if we listen carefully, we hear in Brahms the influence of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, at every turn.

This piece was loosely modeled after Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, written a century before. Caroline Shaw's Entr'acte is a sort of riff on the classical minuet and trio; inspired partly by Haydn, it nonetheless sounds completely fresh and new-contemporary in the most attractive, vital, and approachable way. Kenji Bunch has referred to his String Quartet No. 3, subtitled Apocryphal Dances, as a 'love letter to the 18th and 19th centuries'. Yet while the forms take inspiration from the old, the harmonic and melodic language is playfully postmodern. Meanwhile,Gershwin's 'Promenade' and Schumann's 'Abendlied' (written for his children) are charming vignettes from times gone by-little glimpses into the past, which stir our souls across the years."

In Search of Lost Time

the Lobster Cove String Quartet with Bill Kirkley, clarinet

Sunday, 7th September at 7pm | $35 suggested

Annisquam Village Church | 820 Washington St . Gloucester, MA 01930