Isidore String Quartet Program Notes
Table of Contents
Event Details
Acknowledgement of Land
The Program
The Artists
Program Notes
CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
presents
Isidore String Quartet
7:30 p.m. Thursday, October 30, 2025
Recital Hall
The program runs approximately 90 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission.
Sponsor
Pieter W. and Lida Ouwehand
Support provided by
Dotty and Paul Rigby Classical Music Endowment
Accessibility services supported by
Sidney and Helen S. Friedman Endowment
A grant from the University Park Fee Board makes Penn State student prices possible.
Acknowledgement of Land
The Penn State University campuses are located on the original homelands of the Erie; Haudenosaunee (Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, Seneca, and Tuscarora); Lenape (Delaware Nation, Delaware Tribe, and Stockbridge-Munsee); Shawnee (Absentee, Eastern, and Oklahoma); Susquehannock; and Wahzhazhe (Osage) Nations.
As a land grant institution, we acknowledge and honor the traditional caretakers of these lands and strive to understand and model their responsible stewardship. We also acknowledge the longer history of these lands and our place in that history.
Written by PSU Educational Equity in collaboration with the Indigenous Peoples Student Association and the Indigenous Faculty and Staff Alliance
Why do we make an acknowledgement?
The Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State gathers people together to foster communities, learn from our unique differences, and participate in civic engagement through the arts. We leverage the act of acknowledging the land to spark curiosity and conversation about our nation’s past, present, and future. This ongoing process can change our learning and healing journey as individuals and as a nation, and it is not meant to be resolved. We are not checking a box; we are living in the questions and the possibilities.
Visit Land Acknowledgment for more information.
THE PROGRAM
Isidore String Quartet
Phoenix Avalon, violin
Adrian Steele, violin
Devin Moore, viola
Joshua McClendon, cello
String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4, “Sunrise” (1797) by Franz Josef Haydn
- Allegro con spirito
- Adagio
- Menuetto (Allegro)
- Finale (Allegro ma non troppo)
Carrot Revolution for String Quartet (2015) by Gabriella Smith
INTERMISSION
String Quartet in G major, Op. 106 (1895) by Antonin Dvořák
- Allegro moderato
- Adagio ma non troppo
- Molto vivace
- Finale (Andante sostenuto-Allegro con fuoco)
THE ARTISTS
Isidore String Quartet
“A polished sonority and well-balanced, tightly synchronized ensemble with nearly faultless intonation… It is heartening to know that chamber music is in good hands with such gifted young ensembles as the Isidore String Quartet."—Chicago Classical Review
Winners of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant and the fourteenth annual Banff International String Quartet Competition in 2022, the New York City-based Isidore String Quartet was formed in 2019 with a vision to revisit, rediscover, and reinvigorate the repertory. The quartet is heavily influenced by the Juilliard String Quartet and the idea of “approaching the established as if it were brand new, and the new as if it were firmly established.”
The quartet began as an ensemble at The Juilliard School, and its musicians have coached with Joel Krosnick, Joseph Lin, Astrid Schween, Laurie Smukler, Joseph Kalichstein, Roger Tapping, Misha Amory, and numerous others.
In North America, the Isidore Quartet has appeared on major series in Boston; New York; Berkeley, Calif.; Chicago; Ann Arbor; Mich.; Pittsburgh; Seattle; Durham, N. C.; Washington, D. C.; Houston; San Francisco; New Orleans; Cincinnati; Toronto; Montreal; and Vancouver. It has collaborated with several eminent performers, including James Ehnes and Jeremy Denk. The Isidore Quartet’s 2025-26 season includes performances in Philadelphia; Cleveland; Calgary, Alberta, Canda; Tulsa, Okla.; Pasadena and Santa Barbara, Calif.; New York; and Washington’s Library of Congress. The ensembles will play return engagements in Montreal, Berkeley and La Jolla, Calif.; Houston; Phoenix; Indianapolis; Baltimore; and Spivey Hall in Georgia.
First-time collaborations include clarinetist Anthony McGill, cellist Sterling Elliott, and the Miró Quartet.
In Europe, Isidore String Quartet has performed at Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, as well as in Bonn (Beethoven Haus), Stuttgart, Cologne, and Dresden, Germany. During 2025-2026 season, the ensemble will make its debut in Paris (Philharmonie) and London (Wigmore Hall).
Over the past several years, the quartet has developed a strong connection to the works of composer and pianist Billy Childs, and it has performed his Quartets No. 2 and 3 throughout North America and Europe. In February 2026, the ensemble will premiere a new Childs quartet written expressly for them.
Both on stage and outside the concert hall, the Isidore String Quartet is deeply invested in connecting with youth and elderly populations, and with marginalized communities who otherwise have limited access to high-quality live music performance. They approach music as a “playground” and attempt to break down barriers to encourage collaboration and creativity.
The name Isidore recognizes the ensemble’s musical connection to the Juilliard Quartet; one of that group’s early members was legendary violinist Isidore Cohen. Additionally, it acknowledges a shared affection for a certain libation. Legend has it that a Greek monk named Isidore concocted the first genuine vodka recipe for the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
The Isidore String Quartet appears by arrangement with David Rowe Artists. Visit www.davidroweartists.com.
PROGRAM NOTES
Franz Joseph Haydn
Born in 1731 in Rohrau, Austria; died in 1809 in Vienna, Austria
String Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 76, No. 4 “Sunrise”
When Franz Joseph Haydn wrote his String Quartet in B-flat Major, P. 76, No. 4 “Sunrise,” in 1797, he was well into his 60s and was the preeminent figure in European music. Having already revolutionized almost every genre of composition, Haydn could have remained a polite figure and rested on his success. His exploration in musical form and orchestration in the last twenty years of his life, however, reveal a restless intellectual always reaching for more intriguing modes of composition.
The first movement of the “Sunrise” quartet begins as the nickname would suggest, with a contemplative chord and an upwardly searching melody. When suddenly the Allegro con Spirito emerges vibrantly, we are thrust into some of Haydn’s most expressive music. The instruments never settle into roles for long. While the first violin is the primary keeper of the melody, the responsibility of being the most active voice is passed from one player to another frequently. The melody that began the piece with such serenity is now fuel for restlessness and volatility.
The second movement is one long line, a luxurious Adagio driven by a soaring, rhapsodic melody in the first violin and dense harmonic accompaniment. Although it is strictly structured and reminiscent of themes from the first movement, the entire thing feels improvised, and the effect on the listener is almost hypnotic. Haydn has a reputation for being rote, metric, and expected. But in this movement, time feels irrelevant and structure useless.
The third movement minuet is a stark awakening from the Adagio. It is the most metrically strict and conventionally danceable movement of the piece. It clocks along initially as a moment of transition between the second and final movements, but it is hardly perfunctory. Just as the movement settles in, the second section makes the music feel as if it is falling apart—the instruments volley back and forth unsteadily, unfurling to the point that all feels like it will end with a whimper. Almost as suddenly as in the first movement, Haydn reinvigorates the music by repeating the dance that has come before.
The final movement represents a culmination and is written with Haydn’s trademark joviality. The melody that pervades the movement is jaunty, joyfully reprising the motifs from earlier in the piece. Its rondo form feels like a theme and variation, the dance-like melody reappearing again and again between small sections of pure embellishment. In a cheerful conclusion typical of Haydn, the piece ends where it began—in a rush, punctuated like in the very beginning by a rising figure in the violin.
Program notes by Connor Buckley
Gabriella Smith
Born in 1991 in Berkely, Calif.
Carrot Revolution
Gabriella Smith is a composer whose work has been frequently performed by many of the greatest practitioners of contemporary music. Her music is, in her own words, inspired by play. It is energetically experimental, often giving the impression that performers are improvising and maybe dancing while doing so. Her mentor John Adams’ music is a helpful reference point. Like his music, Smith’s compositions are both referential and boundary pushing, offering listeners imaginative interpretations of music and sounds they’re familiar with. It is music that is joyfully self-reflective and seems to expand infinitely as it devours its own sense of optimism.
Enter her string quartet, Carrot Revolution, an expressively positive work about seeing with fresh eyes. Its title comes from a quote misattributed to Cezanne: “The day will come when a single, freshly observed carrot will start a revolution.” The premise is simple: What if one of the oldest genres in the classical repertory were used to look at music from a new perspective? What results is a whirlwind globetrotting and time-traveling exercise that requires the performers to use a stunning variety of techniques as they reimagine the string quartet.
The quartet has the sense of chiastic rhetoric, its percussive hinge squeaks and acme sirens bracketing the piece and signaling a kind of argument like the opening and concluding paragraphs of a political pamphlet. The structure in between on first look might appear haphazard, as if several unrelated things are simply being recounted. When heard, though, the piece assembles into something neat and inevitable. And despite the quartet’s feeling of frenetic newness, its roots are firm: It is essentially an overture. Instead of a collection of themes from an associated show, however, it is a collection of musical memories from Smith herself. It is as tangential as a conversation, but as coherent as one too.
The themes presented in the quartet have an uncanny feeling. Western classical music has had a long tradition from its beginning of composers quoting other works, but here the quotes don’t feel recited. Rather, they evoke the feeling of the original, much like the folk music of Béla Bartók’s quartets. This is partly because the themes are compressed and collaged. At any given moment, the quartet feels like it is in an identifiable style, and yet, just as the thought comes, the music shifts and becomes something else entirely—once medieval, now modern, once like an Irish pub, then like a rock club. The string quartet is almost doing impressions, like one section where they play what might seem like an evocation of a train from a musical about Western life.
And so on and so on: One’s imagination could wander. It’s like a very quick and well-rehearsed variety show. Even The Who makes a brief showing, improbably after what appears to be Georgian folk music. As the piece dissolves into rhythmic oblivion, the listener is left with the feeling of having lived ecstatically through someone else’s memories.
Program notes by Connor Buckley
Antonín Dvořák
Born in 1841 in Nelahozeves, Austrain Empire died in 1904 in Austria-Hungary
String Quartet No. 13 in G Major, Op. 106
Antonín Dvořák’s melodies are so ingrained in Western culture that it may be difficult to recognize how invigorating composers of the time found his music. His artistry was in the combination of the seriousness of Richard Wagner, the melodic inventiveness of Franz Schubert, and the incandescent clarity of Johann Sebastian Bach and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. He was neither minimalist or maximalist, but an opportunist. Whatever the moment called for was what he wrote, and his intuition was outstanding.
An oft-cited skill of Dvořák’s is the transparency of his writing, that each voice never muddies its neighbor. As a result, the music shimmers and his melodies sing that much more fully. A significant reason for this is his sensitivity to the inner voices. For many composers, this is filler texture added after the outer voices are written, with varying degrees of attention given. Dvořák was as attentive as he could be. He spent much of his early career performing as a professional violist, and he understood better than most how important these voices were for scaffolding the overall composition. In his String Quartet No. 13, the viola part is beautiful—not showy but obviously imbued with care and joy. It is not the only thing that makes this quartet exceptional, but it is instructive of some of its subtle magic.
Dvořák’s polystylistic leanings are apparent from the first notes of the quartet—two opposing phrases, one Classical, proper, and stately, the other Romantic, freewheeling, and forward pushing set the quartet on a joyful course of exploration. These two little ideas get transformed in true Dvořák fashion into a bewildering array of irresistibly catchy themes. Though the movement is in standard sonata form, its constant mining of its opening motifs makes it feel like a theme and variations, a formal push and pull that characterizes every movement of the piece.
The second movement is one of the more exceptional instrumental pieces the composer ever wrote. Its two themes are distantly related versions of the piece’s opening remarks, the first hymnlike and open, the second slithering and tightly wound. Each of these themes is, in turns, given its own set of variations that tumble over each other restlessly until the gleaming denouement.
The third movement is a quintessential Dvořákian folk-inflected dance. The first section, like the best of any dance music, contains two differently counted dances in one. It is, from its principal theme, a march in a slow two and, from its overarching feel and tempo, a fast round dance in three. The elegant legato sections that interrupt provide more variation in their contrasting texture.
The fourth movement is an electrifying restatement of what has come before. Its function in general is palindromic, resembling the first movement in its motifs, its unassuming opening section, its energetic primary theme, and its undulating rondo form. It contains the most dramatic shifts in texture and mood of the whole piece, oscillating between frenetic and demure, so that its sure, raucous ending feels triumphant to the extreme.
Program notes by Connor Buckley