Feb. 4: Jupiter Quartet Performs with David & Phillip Ying at Krannert Center
L-R David and Phillip Ying, Jupiter Quartet
The Jupiter Quartet
with Cellist David Ying and Violist Phillip Ying
Presented by the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts
Performing Music by
Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Johannes Brahms
Tuesday, February 4, 2025 at 7:30pm
University of Illinois | Krannert Center | Foellinger Great Hall | 500 S Goodwin Ave. | Urbana, IL
Tickets and Information
“an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.” – The New Yorker
Urbana, IL – On Tuesday, February 4, 2025 at 7:30pm, the Jupiter String Quartet –– whose playing The Washington Post describes as “characterful, illuminating and utterly committed” –– gives its third concert of the season at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts’s Foellinger Great Hall (500 S. Goodwin Ave). Alongside cellist David Ying and violist Phillip Ying of the Ying Quartet, the collaborative sextet of musicians will perform a program of lively and intense music, featuring the String Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85 by Richard Strauss, Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4,by Arnold Schoenberg, and the String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 36, by Johannes Brahms.
The Jupiter and Ying Quartets share a close bond as friends and musical colleagues. The two groups have collaborated many times over the years, including frequently at the Bowdoin International Music Festival in Maine, where David and Phillip Ying serve as Artistic Directors
Of their program at the Krannert Center, the Jupiter Quartet says:
“We are incredibly pleased to welcome our good friends, David and Phillip Ying, to the UIUC campus. We have spent the past eight summers at their wonderful Bowdoin International Music Festival in Brunswick, Maine, and one of the highlights for us every year is the chance to collaborate in concert with them and their fantastic colleagues in the Ying Quartet. It is a joy to combine with them on this exciting program made up completely of string sextets. This particular chamber music formation provides both the intimacy inherent in smaller ensembles, as well as a rich, orchestral lushness provided by an additional cello and viola.”
About the Music
Strauss’ final opera, Capriccio, is a highly Romantic work. Presenting an opera within an opera, the story poses and attempts to answer the question of, “What is more important – music or poetry?” In their performance of a string sextet excerpt from the opera, the musicians embody the argument between music and poetry, and the texture alternates between beautiful lyricism and dramatic articulation.
Continuing in the vein of hyper-Romanticism, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night) is one of Schoenberg’s most popular and accessible works. It is inspired by a poem of the same name, written by Richard Dehmel and published in the collection Weib und Welt (1896; “Woman and World”). The work is full of extreme drama and extraordinary beauty, and reflects vividly the struggle between despair and acceptance featured in the underlying poem. The journey leads gradually to a transformation from darkness into light. .
Brahms wrote his second sextet (in G Major) roughly five years after the first (in B-flat Major). The work is a sublime example of his extreme range of expression, containing both great subtlety and extreme brilliance. It starts with a hazy oscillation and slow unfolding of the melody in the first movement, and ends at the other end of the spectrum in the last movement, with a bright, ecstatic close. Throughout the work, Brahms weaves the six voices around each other with a deft and ingenious touch.
About the Artists
Violist Phillip Ying is a frequent speaker, panelist and outside evaluator on subjects such as arts-in-education, advocacy through performance, and chamber music residencies. He served a six-year term as President of Chamber Music America, a national service organization for chamber music ensembles, presenters, and artist managers. Cellist David Ying and his wife, pianist Elinor Freer, are artistic directors of the Skaneateles Festival where their imaginative view of music has earned the festival national recognition including a special ASCAP award for adventurous programming.
The Ying Quartet first came to professional prominence in the early 1990s during their years as resident quartet of Jesup, Iowa, a farm town of 2000 people. Now quartet-in-residence at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, the Ying Quartet members have private teaching studios and lead a rigorous, sequentially designed chamber music program. The Ying Quartet’s enterprising view of concert performance has taken it to celebrated music venues of the world as well as the White House, correctional facilities, business schools, and hospitals, not to mention Grammy Award-winning musical collaborations.
Founded in 2001, the Jupiter Quartet is firmly established as an important voice in the world of chamber music, and exudes an energy that is at once friendly, knowledgeable, and adventurous. The New Yorker states, “The Jupiter String Quartet, an ensemble of eloquent intensity, has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene.”
The Quartet has been in residence at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2012, where they maintain private studios and direct the chamber music program. This season, they will perform one more concert at the Krannert Center, including a concert of octets including the Mendelssohn Octet in E-flat Major with the Aris Quartet on March 13, 2025.
Based in Urbana, IL and giving concerts all over the country, the Jupiter String Quartet is a particularly intimate group, consisting of violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law). The Quartet has performed in some of the world’s finest halls, including New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Boston’s Jordan Hall, Mexico City's Palacio de Bellas Artes, Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center and Library of Congress, Austria’s Esterhazy Palace, Seoul’s Sejong Chamber Hall, and more.
For Calendar Editors:
Description: The Jupiter Quartet, the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, which The New Yorker describes as “an ensemble of eloquent intensity,” continues its season series presented by at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, performing with cellist David Ying and violist Phillip Ying of the Ying Quartet. The six esteemed musicians will combine their expressive musicality and shrewd technical skills to perform a program that includes: String Sextet from Capriccio, Op. 85 by Richard Strauss, Verklarte Nacht by Arnold Schoenberg, and String Sextet No. 2 in G Major by Johannes Brahms.
Concert details:
Who: Jupiter String Quartet, Cellist David Ying, and Violist Phillip Ying
What: Music by Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Johannes Brahms
When: Tuesday, February 4, 2025 at 7:30pm
Where: University of Illinois; Krannert Center for the Performing Arts; Foellinger Great Hall
500 S Goodwin Ave.; Urbana, IL
Tickets and information: www.krannertcenter.com/events/jupiter-string-quartet-david-ying-cello-and-phillip-ying-viola