Excelsa String Quartet
Excelsa String Quartet
Event Attributes
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Thomas Adès' Arcadiana evokes images of idyll and conveys "a here that is gone, or is going." Excelsa contrasts Adès' mystical work with Mozart's String Quartet No. 16 in E-flat Major, which is one of six quartets that the composer dedicated to Haydn.
The program concludes with Steve Reich's Different Trains, which uses recording samples of train sounds and speech to juxtapose the composer's memories of being a Jewish child in 1940s America, with the memories of child-survivors of the Holocaust.
Program
- Thomas Adès (1971-)
Arcadiana (1994)
I. Venezia notturno
II. Das klinget so herrlich, das klinget so schon
III. Auf dem Wasser zu singen
IV. Et… (tango mortale)
V. L’Embarquement
VI. O Albion
VII. Lethe - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)
String Quartet No. 16 in E-flat Major, K. 428
I. Allegro no troppo
II. Andante con Moro
III. Menuetto: Allegro - Steve Reich (b. 1936)
Different Trains
I. America - Before the War
II. Europe - During the War
III. After the War
Excesa Quartet is the Graduate Fellowship String Quartet at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Recognized internationally for their artistry, they are the First Prize winners of "The Provincie Limburg Prijs" along with the “EMCY Artprize” at the Charles Hennen 26th International Chamber Music Competition for Strings in The Netherlands, and were finalists in the Franz Schubert and Modern Music Competition in Graz, Austria.