NIU’s world-class Avalon String Quartet will perform works of Joseph Haydn, Dmitri Shostakovich and Franz Schubert, Thursday, October 3 at 8 p.m. Admission is free of charge.
The concert is the first of four this year for NIU’s quartet-in-residence, and will be held at the Recital Hall, NIU, School of Music, 550 Lucinda Ave., DeKalb.
The program will open with Haydn’s Opus 33 no. 2, nicknamed “The Joke,” one of his best-known quartets. Haydn is considered the father of the string quartet, and the father of the symphony.
The quartet will then play Shostakovich’s Quartet Number Seven. “At 12 minutes it’s the shortest of his 15 quartets,” said Anthony Devroye, Avalon Quartet violist and NIU School of Music faculty member. “It’s intense and enigmatic and abstract. It’s punchy and detached, very emotionally austere.”
Finally, they will perform Schubert’s Quartet No. 15 in G Major. “It’s Schubert’s final string quartet,” Devroye said. “It’s a 45-minute piece and a real journey. There’s a lifetime worth of emotional complexity and depth.”
This will be the first time the Avalon String Quartet has performed any of these pieces in DeKalb.
Their upcoming concerts in DeKalb are November 21, January 30 and April 26, all in the Recital Hall and starting at 8 p.m. The quartet will perform a work of Shostakovich in each concert, as well as music of Mozart, Beethoven, Grieg, and several contemporary composers.
The Avalon String Quartet also maintains a concert series at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), as part of a partnership between The AIC and NIU. Each performance will make a connection to traveling exhibits, and will be held on Sunday afternoons at 2 p.m. in Fullerton Hall at the AIC, 111 South Michigan Ave., Chicago, November 5, January 14, March 25 and May 13.
Members of the Avalon String Quartet are Blaise Magnière, violin; Marie Wang, violin; Anthony Devroye, viola; and Cheng-Hou Lee, cello.
