Jorgensen Presents Brentano String Quartet 3/27

The Independent of London calls the Brentano String Quartet "passionate, uninhibited and spell-binding." And that's what the Quartet promises to be when it performs at Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts at 7:30 pm on Saturday March 27.

Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has won kudos worldwide for its technical brilliance, musical insight and stylistic elegance. The group is named for Antoine Brentano, whom many scholars believe to have been Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved," the enigmatic individual to whom he wrote his famous love confession.

The Brentano Quartet, including Mark Steinberg and Serena Canin (violin), Misha Amory (viola), and Nina Maria Lee (cello), has garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award. In 1996 the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center invited it to be the inaugural member of Chamber Music Society Two. It has been honored with the UK's Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut at London's Wigmore Hall and is presently Princeton University's first Quartet-in-Residence. The Quartet has appeared throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan and Australia, performing in the world's most prestigious venues. It has also participated in summer festivals including those in Aspen, Edinburgh, Caramoor, and at Finland's Kuhmo Festival.

In addition to the standard repertoire, the Brentano Quartet has a strong interest in both very old and very new music, performing the madrigals of Gesualdo as fluently as works by such important contemporary composers as Elliot Carter, Charles Wuorinen, Chou Wen-chung and György Kurtág.

The New York Times extols the Quartet's "luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism," while the Philadelphia Inquirer praises its "seemingly infallible instincts for finding the center of gravity in every phrase and musical gesture." The group will bring these talents to Jorgensen in a program that will include Schumann's Quartet in F Major, Op. 41, No. 2; Britten's Quartet No. 3; and Mendelssohn's String Quintet in B-flat Major, featuring UConn Professor of Music Theodore Arm on viola. Dr. Arm is a favorite of summer chamber music festival audiences and has appeared with many well known ensembles. He has also been a member of the highly acclaimed chamber group TASHI since 1976.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Rd. on the UConn campus in Storrs. Regular tickets are $28 and $30, with some discounts available. For tickets and information, call the Box Office at 860.486.4226, Monday through Friday, 11 am-5 pm, or order online at jorgensen.uconn.edu. Convenient free parking is available across the street in the North Garage.