Juilliard String Quartet Performs Quartets by Mozart and Richard Wernick

NEW YORK — The Juilliard String Quartet, now in its 70th season, performs quartets by Mozart and Richard Wernick, and is joined by incoming cellist Astrid Schween in the Schubert String Quintet on Monday, February 22, 2016, at 7:30pm in Alice Tully Hall as part of Juilliard’s Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series.

More details from Juilliard (www.juilliard.edu):

Current members of the Quartet are violinists Joseph Lin and Ronald Copes, violist Roger Tapping, and cellist Joel Krosnick, who is celebrating his 42nd and final season with the Juilliard String Quartet. This will be Mr. Krosnick’s final concert in Alice Tully Hall as a member of the Juilliard String Quartet. Following the concert, he will receive Juilliard’s highest honor, the President’s Medal from Juilliard President Joseph W. Polisi. The Quartet welcomes cellist Astrid Schween, an alumna and longtime member of the Lark Quartet, who will become a member of the Juilliard String Quartet this fall 2016. She will also be joining the Juilliard faculty.

The program features Mozart’s Quartet in C Major (“Dissonance”), K. 465; Richard Wernick’s String Quartet No. 9 (2015, New York premiere); and Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major, D. 956.

Tickets for $30 are available at events.juilliard.edu or at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard students with valid ID may purchase tickets for $15.

Reflecting on his time with the Quartet, cellist Joel Krosnick writes in The Juilliard Journal (February 2016 issue): “For 42 years, I have had the privilege of sharing great music and deeply meaningful relationships with the most serious and inspiring musicians and colleagues: violinists Robert Mann, Joel Smirnoff, Joseph Lin, Earl Carlyss, and Ronald Copes, and violists Samuel Rhodes and Roger Tapping.” He continues: “From the moment I began to rehearse with the quartet, in May 1974, I have never looked back, only forward to each new challenge.” To read the complete article, go to Joel Krosnick Looks Back: 42 Years With the Juilliard String Quartet.

About the Juilliard String Quartet

The Juilliard String Quartet, widely known as the quintessential American string quartet, celebrates the 2015-16 season, the Quartet’s 70th, with concert tours in North America, Europe and Asia; performances of Elliott Carter’s String Quartet No. 1 and a new work by Richard Wernick commissioned for them by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society; and concerts honoring cellist Joel Krosnick at New York’s Alice Tully Hall, the Ravinia Festival and the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, featuring the Schubert Cello Quintet with guest cellist Astrid Schween who succeeds Mr. Krosnick in the fall of 2016. 

The Quartet also celebrates a groundbreaking new interactive app on Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” Quartet, released in 2015 by Touchpress and Juilliard/Digital, available at Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” app. An audio recording of the work is also available exclusively on iTunes at Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” audio recording.

Founded in 1946, the Juilliard String Quartet was the first ensemble to play all six Bartók quartets in the United States, and its performances of Schoenberg’s quartets helped establish the works as cornerstones of the modern string quartet literature. The Quartet’s recordings of the Bartók and Schoenberg Quartets, as well as those of Debussy, Ravel and Beethoven won GrammyAwards, and in 2011 the Quartet became the first classical music ensemble to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. In 2014 Sony Classical reissued the Quartet’s landmark recordings of the first four Elliott Carter String Quartets together with the recently recorded Carter Quartet No. 5, making a complete historical document.

Over its seven decades, the Quartet has made manifest the credo of its founders to “play new works as if they were established masterpieces and established masterpieces as if they were new.”   In addition to Carter and Wernick, the Quartet’s 2015-16 season repertoire features Schubert’s Quartettsatz, Mozart’s “Dissonance” Quartet, the Debussy Quartet and Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 135.  Their collaborations also include the Brahms Piano Quintet with Mihae Lee, as well as the Brahms G major Sextet with cellist Marcy Rosen and former Juilliard Quartet violist Samuel Rhodes.  Last season they toured North America, Asia and Europe with typically varied programming including Shulamit Ran’s Quartet No. 2, “Vistas”, works by Webern, Berg, Martinu and Elgar, as well as Schubert’s  “Death and the Maiden”  Quartet.   In 2013 they premiered the String Quartet No. 3, “Whereof man cannot speak . . .” by Jesse Jones.

Devoted master teachers, the members of the Juilliard String Quartet offer classes and open rehearsals when on tour. At The Juilliard School, where they are the string quartet in residence, all are sought-after members of the string and chamber music faculty. Annually in May, they are hosts of the 5-day internationally recognized Juilliard String Quartet Seminar. This year’s Juilliard String Quartet Seminar will take place May 23-27, 2016 with closing concerts in Paul Hall on Friday, May 27 at 4pm and 7pm.

In performance, recordings and incomparable work educating and training the major quartets of our time, the Juilliard String Quartet has carried the banner of the United States and The Juilliard School throughout the world.

About Astrid Schween

Cellist Astrid Schween is an internationally recognized soloist and chamber artist. As a long-time member of the Lark Quartet, she performed in some of the world’s most prestigious venues, recorded numerous CDs, and received many honors including the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Gold Medal at Russia’s Shostakovich Competition.

While still a teenager, she made her debut as soloist with the New York Philharmonic under the direction of Zubin Mehta and went on to receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees at The Juilliard School, where she was twice awarded the Juilliard Cello Prize. Her teachers there included Harvey Shapiro, Leonard Rose, Channing Robbins and Ardyth Alton. She also studied with Bernard Greenhouse, Dr. H.T. Ma, Eugene Moye, and in London with Jacqueline Du Pré.

Ms. Schween currently serves as cello professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is on the faculty of the Hartt School of Music, Mount Holyoke College, and Interlochen Center for the Arts. She has served as juror for the Fischoff, Sphinx, New England Conservatory and Concert Artist Guild competitions and is an occasional speaker and panelist for organizations such as Chamber Music America. Most recently, she was appointed to the Artistic Advisory Board of the new Global M-Prize Competition and invited by the Library of Congress to speak on the leading role of women in music.

A frequent guest artist with the Boston and Memphis Chamber Music Societies, Ms. Schween also performs extensively as a member of the Boston Trio, an ensemble-in-residence at the New England Conservatory. Invited by celebrated violin virtuoso and artistic director, James Ehnes, Ms. Schween performed at the Seattle Chamber Music Festival in January 2016. She has also been invited by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer George Walker and The Juilliard School, to perform the Walker Sonata for Cello and Piano at Juilliard and the Harvard Club in New York this season.

In September 2016, Astrid Schween will succeed Joel Krosnick as cellist of the Juilliard String Quartet and join the faculty at The Juilliard School. She will join the quartet this spring as a guest artist for performances of the Schubert String Quintet at the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, Ravinia Festival, and at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall.

PROGRAM LISTING:

Monday, February 22, 2016, at 7:30pm, Alice Tully Hall

Juilliard String Quartet

Daniel Saidenberg Faculty Recital Series

Joseph Lin and Ronald Copes, violins

Roger Tapping, viola

Joel Krosnick, cello

Astrid Schween, cello (guest artist)

MOZART Quartet in C Major (“Dissonance”), K. 465

Richard WERNICK String Quartet No. 9 (2015, New York premiere)

SCHUBERT String Quintet in C Major, D. 956

Tickets for $30 are available at events.juilliard.edu or at the Alice Tully Hall Box Office. Tickets are free for Juilliard students; non-Juilliard student with valid ID may purchase tickets for $15.