Ancora String Quartet

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Barry Lewis

Ancora String Quartet (left to right): Wes Luke, Robin Ryan, Marika Fischer Hoyt, Benjamin Whitcomb.

press release: ASQ closes its 18th season with a trio of concerts, and a program featuring two quartets from the early 19th century, juxtaposed with a shorter piece of much more recent date.

Mendelssohn's Op. 13 was written in 1827 when he was 18 years old. He'd written the Octet two years earlier, but this was his first mature string quartet. It expresses his youthful passion, and includes one of his signature bubbly scherzos.

Between our two more-established works, we insert a short piece entitled (appropriately enough) 'Entr'acte' (Intermission), composed by Caroline Shaw in 2011. The 12-minute piece, subtitled    { a minuet & trio } takes haunting fragments from Baroque and Classical styles and treats them with 21st-century audacity. With an ABA structure, the opening and closing sighing motif seems dolorous, but takes its own tristesse in a wry, philosophical spirit.

While both the Mendelssohn and Shaw end quietly, we conclude the program with Beethoven's exuberant Quartet No. 6, the final quartet in the composer's set of six early quartets, his Opus 18. This delightful work, completed in 1800, is full of energy and drive; the melancholy mood of the brief 4th movement 'La malinconia' (Melancholy) is banished by a cheerful Allegretto, ending with a flourish in the final Prestissimo.