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: Concert Dates:

• Friday, February 7 at 12:00 pm, WERN 88.7 FM: Interview with WPR hostNorman Gilliland on The Midday  

• Friday, February 7 from 5:00 - 7:00 pm, Olbrich Gardens Bolz Conservatory, 3330 Atwood Avenue, Madison. The Canopy Sessions, tickets at the door: $5.

• Saturday, February 8 at 7:30 pm, Park (‘Freethinkers’) Hall, 307 Polk Street, Sauk City. Tickets: $15 general, $12 kids & seniors

• Sunday, February 9 at 2:00 pm, Chai Point Retirement Community, 1400 N. Prospect Avenue, Milwaukee. Free.

The program opens with an unusual work, the Quartet No. 2 in G Major, by American composer Randall Thompson. Better known for his choral pieces, Thompson wrote this quartet in 1967 to celebrate the 130th anniversary of the Harvard Musical Association. The quartet is joyous and optimistic in character, with thoughtful and creative part-writing. The first movement brims with youthful energy, contained in smoothly-flowing triplets. The simple, graceful folk melody that opens the second movement continually reinvents itself in a set of charming variations. The third movement’s heartfelt tune expresses a deep content, setting up the finale, whose explosive energy erupts in a good-natured, light-hearted romp.

Beethoven wrote the second piece on our program, the Quartet in B♭ Major, Op. 130, 141 years before the Thompson and many centuries beyond it in subtlety, sophistication, intellectual rigor and emotional depth. At six movements and 40 minutes, it is the composer’s longest piece of chamber music, and it stretches limits in other ways as well. The original work, completed in 1825, contained the Grosse Fuge (great fugue) but Beethoven replaced that in 1826 with the Finale Allegro, the last full-scale movement he completed before his death in 1827. Op. 130 bristles with contrasts, and juxtapositions of extremes, on the micro-level to the macro-level, all contained in movements ranging from a short, gnarly Presto, to a graceful Poco Scherzo, to a lyrical, innocent Alla Danza Tedesca (In the Style of a German Dance), to the fabled Cavatina which, Beethoven wrote, moved him to tears when he even thought about it.

In performing Op. 130, the Ancora String Quartet tackles its 14th of the 16 Beethoven String Quartets. The ASQ plans to perform Op. 59 #3, and Op. 131, in the summer and fall, to complete the Beethoven cycle in this, the 250th anniversary of his birth.