Feb. 24: Telegraph Quartet Presented by Stanford Live
Photo of the Telegraph Quartet by Lisa Marie Mazzucco available in high resolution at: www.jensenartists.com/artists-profiles/telegraph-quartet
Telegraph Quartet Presented by Stanford Live
Performing Music by Grażyna Bacewicz, Alban Berg, Mieczysław Weinberg
Saturday, February 24, 2024 at 7pm
The Studio | 327 Lasuen St. | Stanford, CA
Tickets and more information: https://live.stanford.edu/calendar/february-2023/telegraph-quartet
“precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication”
– The Strad
Stanford, CA – On Sunday, February 24, 2024 at 7pm, the Telegraph Quartet (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) will be presented in concert by Stanford Live at The Studio (327 Lasuen Street). Telegraph Quartet will perform a program that highlights music from the first half of the 20th century, including String Quartet No. 4 (1951) by Grażyna Bacewicz, Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite (1925-26), and String Quartet No. 1 (1941) by Benjamin Britten.
Known for their technical prowess and appreciation for the history behind music and the experiences of composers, the program Telegraph Quartet will perform features music that juggles the flagrant turmoils of World War II with the subtlety of deep passion when intertwined with a covert affair. Together, these works give Telegraph Quartet the opportunity to display their emotionally nuanced and seamlessly unified musical expression from vastly different emotional vantage points.
The Telegraph Quartet’s new release, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths was released on August 25 via Azica Records. The first album in a three record series focused on string quartets of the era, Divergent Paths offers a glimpse into the beginning of the 20th century. The Telegraph Quartet explores this time period of bewildering and unbridled creativity through the work of Arnold Schoenberg and Maurice Ravel, whose music on this album weaves threads of great contrast and surprising similarity. Part of the program the Telegraph Quartet is performing for Stanford Live –– Grażyna Bacewicz’s String Quartet No. 4 (1951), and Benjamin Britten’s String Quartet No. 1 (1941) –– make up the selections that will be recorded on the second volume in the series.
Violinist Joseph Maile says of the historical context built into this program:
“All three of these works represent milestones in the musical development of each composer and the emergence of a mature style for each. It may be no coincidence that each was also written during or after troubling or downright traumatic points in their lives, whether deeply personal, in the case of Alban Berg and his doomed love affair, or in the face of the vast societal upheaval and displacement, in the case of Britten and Bacewicz’s personal experiences of World War II.”
Grażyna Bacewicz’s String Quartet No. 4 was composed in 1951, several years after the end of World War II. During this time, Bacewicz lived through the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. The work opens with a kind of sorrow-tinged hope that builds to a joyous third movement.
Alban Berg’s unlikely muse and the inspiration of his Lyric Suite, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin, was discovered much later through a miniature score of the composer outlining a secret love narrative. In 1925 an affair began between them––both were married––and Berg composed the work over the next year as a musical manifestation of the excitement, trepidation, and suffering of their secret relationship, going so far as to include their initials in musical cryptograms throughout.
Benjamin Britten and his future partner Peter Pears fled England in 1939 with the rumblings of war with Germany on their heels, in part to avoid their inevitable jailing if war broke out due to their pacifist beliefs. War did break out shortly and by 1941, the homesick Britten was writing his first quartet, with a nostalgia for his island home that is reflected in the wave-like motions of the work’s third movement.
More about the Telegraph Quartet: Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition.
The Quartet has performed in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. They have collaborated with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; composer-vocalist Theo Bleckmann; St. Lawrence Quartet, and the Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by John Harbison, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger. In 2018 the Quartet released its debut album, Into the Light, featuring works by Anton Webern, Benjamin Britten, and Leon Kirchner on the Centaur label. The Telegraph Quartet released its new album, 20th Century Vantage Points: Divergent Paths –– which features Ravel’s renowned quartet and Schoenberg’s first quartet –– on August 25 via Azica Records.
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, the Quartet is currently on the chamber music faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music as the Quartet-in-Residence and has given master classes at the SFCM Collegiate and Pre-College Divisions, through the Morrison Artist Series at San Francisco State University, and abroad at the Taipei National University of the Arts, National Taiwan Normal University, and in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Telegraph has also served as artists-in-residence at the Interlochen Adult Chamber Music Camp, SoCal Chamber Music Workshop, and Crowden Music Center Chamber Music Workshop. In November 2020, the Telegraph Quartet launched ChamberFEAST!, a chamber music workshop in Taiwan and in fall 2020, Telegraph launched an online video project called TeleLab, in which the ensemble collectively breaks down the components of a movement from various works for quartet.
For more information, visit www.telegraphquartet.com.
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For Calendar Editors:
Description: The award-winning Telegraph Quartet, described by The Strad as having "precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication,” is presented in concert by Stanford Live on Saturday, February 24, 2024 at 7:00pm. The Bay Area ensemble will perform a program highlighting music from the first half of the 20th century, including String Quartet No. 4 by Grażyna Bacewicz, Lyric Suite by Alban Berg, and String Quartet No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25 by Benjamin Britten.
Short description: The Telegraph Quartet, described as having "precise tuning, textural variety and impassioned communication,” (The Strad), is presented by Stanford Live on February 24, 2024 for a performance featuring the music of Grażyna Bacewicz, Alban Berg, and Benjamin Britten.
Concert details:
Who: Telegraph Quartet
Presented by Stanford Live
What: Music by Grażyna Bacewicz, Alban Berg, and Benjamin Britten
When: Saturday, February 24, 2024 at 7pm
Where: The Studio, 327 Lasuen St., Stanford, CA, 94305
Tickets and information: www.live.stanford.edu/calendar/february-2024/telegraph-quartet