Takács String Quartet with Garrick Ohlsson
UW Memorial Union-Shannon Hall 800 Langdon St., Madison, Wisconsin 53706
$47.
press release: The Program includes:
Mozart Quartet K575
Shostakovich Quartet No. 11
Brahms Piano Quintet
The Takács Quartet is renowned for the vitality of its interpretations. The New York Times recently praised the ensemble for "revealing the familiar as unfamiliar, making the most tradition of works feel radical once more" and the Financial Times described their performance with awe: "Even in the most fiendish repertoire these players who no fear, injecting the music with a heady sense of freedom. At the same time, though, there is an uncompromising attention to detail: neither a note nor a bow-hair is out of place."
Formed in 1975 in Budapest the Takács Quartet gained worldwide attention after its First Place win at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France. The super-group has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards, and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits.
Now entering its forty-second season, The Takács Quartet is also known for their innovative programming. It performed Philip Roth’s Everyman program with Philip Seymour Hoffman in 2007 at Carnegie Hall, in 2014 and 2015 with Meryl Streep at Princeton, and at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto.
Pianist Garrick Ohlsson is the only American to have ever won the Gold Medal at the International Chopin Competition in Warsaw. Considered one of the world’s finest pianists, a musician of interpretive and technical prowess, Ohlsson has collaborated with Takács, Cleveland, Emerson, and Tokyo string quartets, among other ensembles. Together with violinist Jorja Fleezanis and cellist Michael Grebanier, he is a founding member of the San Francisco-based FOG Trio. In recognition of the Chopin bicentenary in 2010, Mr. Ohlsson was featured in a documentary, "The Art of Chopin," co-produced by Polish, French, British and Chinese television stations. In 2014 he was the recipient of the Jean Gimbel Lane Prize in Piano Performance from Northwestern University Bienen School of Music. His ten-disc set of the complete Beethoven Sonatas, for Bridge Records, has garnered critical acclaim, including a Grammy for Vol. 3.