The France-based Ysaÿe Quartet will perform in Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Music Hall on Tuesday, March 31. The group's concert of Romantic music, Twilight, aims to pull from the depths of the listener’s heart and bring that person face-to-face with the weight of love, life, and, of course, death.
The Ysaÿe musicians, well known for their outstanding mastery of French Classical music, will feature a program of some of the greatest composers of the Romantic era: Fauré, Bartok, and Franck. Each of these composers wrote a quartet before his death, so their inclusion in the concert brings the audience the full experience of these composers' mastery as well as their individual styles.
The term "Ysaÿe" has deep musical and historical implications, being related to the great Belgian violinist and composer Eugene Ysaÿe who lived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was of the peasant class but had a strong musical lineage, which could be traced through the generations of his family.
The Ysaÿe Quartet comes from Paris and has a kind of lineage of its own as the musicians introduce us to the great music of the last two centuries.
Twilight will include a performance of composer César Franck’s Quartet in D-Major. Franck, a great organist as well as composer, lived through the 19th century. Of Belgian descent, he nonetheless lived and worked in France.
Twilight will also feature a work by Béla Bartok, who composed many Romantic pieces in his youth. His Quartet No. 6 delves into the despair and irony of the World War II period, the last years of Bartok’s life.
The last of the compositions that the Ysaÿe Quartet will perform will be the Quartet in E-Minor, Opus. 121 by the French composer Gabriel Fauré. Fauré was an organist, musician, teacher, and composer. Ysaÿe prefers his style of music for its “smoothness and complex harmonies,” according to the program’s press release. The Fauré quartet, also with a vague reference to death, emphasizes the peace therein.
For more information, please visit www.pittsburghchambermusic.org/
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