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Penn State College of Arts and Architecture
Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State

Event Slides Per Node 1415

  • Members of the quartet sit on plush couches with their instruments.

Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s
Front Row: National
Calidore String Quartet

7:30 pm Wednesday, March 10, 2021

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s Front Row: National virtual concert collection features beautifully shot, full-length HD performance videos from the society’s archive, curated by organization Artistic Directors David Finckel and Wu Han.

The series was created to provide a new way for audiences to experience chamber music in a meaningful and innovative way—from the virtual “front row,” in the comfort and safety of listeners’ homes.

This episode of the recorded digital series features Calidore String Quartet—previously in residence at Lincoln Center as part of the Chamber Music Society’s Bowers Program—performing works by Felix Mendelssohn and Antonín Dvořák.

Han and Finckel introduce the program and lead a discussion with the Calidore musicians during intermission. 

A New York Times critic praises Calidore for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct.” A Los Angeles Times reviewer describes the quartet as “astonishing” and lauds its balance of “intellect and expression.” 

The program:

Mendelssohn: Quartet for Strings in F minor, Op. 80
Dvořák: Quintet in G Major for Two Violins, Viola, Cello, and Bass, Op. 77
(featuring guest double bassist Xavier Foley)

Download program notes.

Within two years of its creation in 2010, Calidore had won grand prizes in most of the major U.S. chamber music competitions. More recently, the ensemble has garnered the 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.

The quartet features violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry, and cellist Estelle Choi. “Four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think, and feel as one,” writes a Washington Post reviewer. “… The grateful audience left enriched and, I suspect, a little more human than it arrived.”

Using an amalgamation of “California” and “doré” (French for “golden”), the quartet’s name represents a reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it received from its home—Los Angeles, California, the “golden state.”

Finckel and Han previously performed at the Center for the Performing Arts as a duo in 2005, and with violinist Philip Setzer in 2017 and 2018 for the Beethoven Piano Trios. Finckel also performed at Penn State as a member of Emerson String Quartet in 1990, 2002, and 2009.

Watch the event beginning at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 10. It will be available for streaming until 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 17.

FREE

How to Watch

The performance will be streamed on this page for free. When streaming becomes available, a "Watch" button will appear. 

The program run time is approximately 1 hour and 30 minutes.

2020–2021 Up Close and Virtual season sponsors

Geisinger
Northwest

Contributions from the members of the Center for the Performing Arts and a grant from the University Park Student Fee Board help make this program free of charge.

Help us continue to provide free streaming programs with a donation of $5 or more. Or join as a member starting at $60 and receive benefits.