Free Concert is Gift to the Middlebury Community
The Performing Arts Series presents the acclaimed Viennese string quartet, the Hugo Wolf Quartett, on Friday, October 28, 2011 at 8:00 p.m. in the Mahaney Center for the Arts Concert Hall. The concert is presented free and open to the public, thanks to the generous support of the Institute for Clinical Science and Art.
This concert is part of a multi-year collaboration between the Performing Arts Series and the Institute for Clinical Science and Art, in which the Institute designates a high-profile concert to be offered for free. This gift to the Middlebury community is made in memory of F. William Sunderman Jr. and Carolyn Reynolds Sunderman. The Institute will also present a second free concert later this season: the Pavel Haas Quartet, on Friday, April 13, 2012.
For 17 years, the quartet has been a fixture on the international chamber music scene and has fascinated audiences around the globe. Their grand personalities, passionate will for expression, and unceasing artistic curiosity are the trademarks of their work.
Through training with the Alban Berg, Smetana, Amadeus, and LaSalle quartets, and also with Ferenc Rados, the ensemble laid the cornerstone for a highly successful career together. Founded in Vienna in 1993, the quartet soon won such coveted awards as the Special Prize of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the European Chamber Music Prize, followed by the International String Quartet Competition in Cremona in 1995— the same year that they debuted in the Vienna Konzerthaus. In 1998, Vienna’s Musikverein and Konzerthaus elected the four as Rising Stars, and since then the quartet has regularly performed in Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, and Berlin’s Philharmonie, as well as at the Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival, the Colmar Festival, La folle journée de Nantes, and the Schubertiade Schwarzenberg.
The quartet equally emphasizes the classical/romantic and contemporary musical literature in their program selection. Indeed, numerous compositions have already been written for, and premiered by, the Hugo Wolf Quartett, such as Friedrich Cerha’s String Quartet No. 4, Johannes Maria Staud’s “Dichotomie,” string quartets by Erich Urbanner, Dirk D´Ase and Otto M. Zykan, and a quartet and octet by jazz guitarist Wolfgang Muthspiel.
The Hugo Wolf Quartett has also distinguished itself on the recording scene. Their recordings of Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18/4 and Op. 132 (Gramola, 2001) and Schubert’s String Quartet D887 and D87 (VMS, 2009) both won Austrian radio station Ö1’s Pasticcio Prize. In addition, the quartet’s close collaboration with legendary jazz trumpeter Kenny Wheeler and pianist John Taylor is documented on the recording Other People (CamJazz, 2006); and, in 2007, the label cpo released the first-ever recording of two string quartets by Franz Mittler, an enigmatic Viennese multi-talent of the first half of the 20th century. The quartet’s latest CD (VMS, 2010) is a live recording of three early Joseph Haydn works performed during the 2009 Lockenhaus Chamber Music Festival.
During the 2011/2012 season, the ensemble will record the complete oeuvre for string quartet by its namesake, the Austrian late Romantic composer Hugo Wolf, as well as a live performance of the Schubert Octet.
The Hugo Wolf Quartett concert is free and open to the public, and no tickets are required. For more information, call x-3168 or go to http://go.middlebury.edu/arts.