Spokane String Quartet

The Spokane String Quartet opens its 2024-25 season Sunday, Oct. 13, with a concert featuring music by Beethoven, Dvořák and Chickasaw classical composer Jerod Tate. The concert begins at 3 p.m. at The Fox Theater.

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Season tickets as well as tickets for individual concerts are now on sale for the Spokane String Quartet’s 2024-25 concert season. Links to the secure purchase sites are on our Concerts page, https://www.spokanestringquartet.org/concerts/.

All seats are general admission. Tickets for individual concerts are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and free for persons under 18 and students with ID. Season tickets, which give you five concerts for the price of four, are $100 for adults and $80 for seniors.

The new season opens at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 13, at The Fox Theater with a concert featuring works by Ludwig van Beethoven, Chickasaw classical composer Jerod Tate and Antonín Dvořák.

The season continues at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 10, at The F0x Theater with the SSQ and guest artist YunJung Park, piano. The program includes works by Franz Joseph Haydn, Johannes Brahms and Robert Schumann.

After a break for the holidays, the Quartet welcomes 2025 with a concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 9, at The Fox Theater featuring guest artist Michal Palzewicz, cello. The program includes works by Dmitri Shostakovich, Ludwig van Beethoven and Alexander Glazunov.

Next up at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 16, at the Bing Crosby Theater is a concert featuring works by Polina Nazaykinskaya, Franz Joseph Haydn and Samuel Barber.

The season closes at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 18, at the Bing Crosby Theater with the SSQ and guest artist Clinton Webb, horn. The concert features works by Caroline Shaw, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johannes Brahms.

Dates have been announced for the Spokane String Quartet’s 2024-25 subscription season at the Fox Theater and the Bing Crosby Theater. Look for your season brochure in the mail in early August. Season tickets are also available to order online at spokanestringquartet.square.site.

The season opens Sunday, Oct. 13, at the Fox Theater with works by Beethoven, Jerrod Tate and Dvorak. This will be followed Sunday, Nov. 10, at the Fox with pianist YunJung Park performing works by Haydn, Brahms and Schumann.

The calendar rolls over to 2025 with a Sunday, Feb. 9, concert at the Fox featuring cellist Michal Palzewicz. He is scheduled to perform String Quintet in A Major by Alexander Glazunov.

The season concludes with two concerts at the Bing Crosby Theater. On Sunday, March 16, the Quartet will present works by Nazaykinskaya, Haydn and Barber. On Sunday, May 18, Spokane Symphony hornist Clinton Webb joins the SSQ in a concert featuring works by Caroline Shaw, Mozart and Brahms.

All concerts begin at 3 p.m. All seats are general admission. Ticket prices are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and free for persons under 18 and students with ID.

The Spokane String Quartet concludes its 2023-24 season Sunday, May 19, with a concert featuring music by Joseph Haydn, Benjamin Britten and Edward Elgar. The concert begins at 3 p.m. at The Bing Crosby Theater.

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The concert opens with Haydn’s String Quartet in C Major, Op. 20, No. 2, and Britten’s 3 Divertimenti for String Quartet (1933). After the intermission the concert concludes with Elgar’s String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 83.

Other composers wrote earlier string quartets, but Joseph Haydn is regarded as the “father of the string quartet” based on structural and textural changes pioneered in his six quartets of Opus 20. No longer were string quartets considered light entertainment where the first violin was predominant and the remaining quartet members played subordinate accompaniment. Opus 20, No. 2 highlights that change from the very first measure as the cello introduces the melody, accompanied by the viola and second violin. Thus, the string quartet became a more democratic conversation between four equal voices able to convey deep musical thought and emotions with four-part harmony and counterpoint.

Edward Elgar composed “patriotic” works at the beginning of World War I followed by creative withdrawal as the war’s incomprehensible destruction unfolded. At age 61, he and Lady Elgar moved back to the Sussex countryside where Elgar regained creative strength from nature, though on quiet days they could hear cannon fire from France during the war’s conclusion. The E Minor String Quartet is one of three chamber masterpieces composed at this time, along with working on his beloved Cello Concerto. Lady Elgar described the second movement as “captured sunshine,” yet this work is no pastoral idyll as Elgar powerfully and introspectively faces a changed world.

Benjamin Britten, at age 20 in 1933, composed a suite of three musical portraits of Britten’s school friends, which was extensively revised into the 3 Divertimenti for String Quartet (1936). Unlike Elgar’s Late Romantic Style, one can hear the modern influences of Stravinsky and Bartok in Britten’s delightful composition. 

All seats are general admission and are available through TicketsWest or at the door. Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and free for persons under 18 and students with ID.

Franz Schubert’s masterwork “Death and Maiden” highlights the Spokane String Quartet’s upcoming concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 24, at the Bing Crosby Theater. The piece replaces Erich Korngold’s String Quartet No. 2 on the previously announced program.

The John Adams piece “Fellow Traveler” opens the program, which features a guest performance by former SSQ cellist John Marshall, who plays principal cello for the Spokane Symphony.

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Sarah Bass, viola player for the Spokane Symphony, joins the group for Mozart’s String Quintet No. 4 in G Minor.

John Adams’ Fellow Traveler was composed for theater director Peter Sellars’ 50th birthday, celebrating their decades-long friendship and collaboration on all of Adams’ operas, beginning in 1985 with Nixon in China. Sellars was initially attracted to Adams’ music with its dramatic “sweep of tension and release, and then adrenaline-inspired visionary states. That is absolutely what you hope for in the theater.” Fellow Traveler captures that vibrant energy in a short, rhythmic sprint using pulsing themes from Nixon in China.

Mozart often played the viola in his own string quartet concerts, highlighting his fondness for the viola. Additionally, he wrote six string quintets which all include a second viola joining the standard string quartet, giving added warmth and texture to the inner voices of the ensemble. String Quintets No. 3 (in C Major) and 4 (in G minor) are contrasting (sunny vs. darker) large-scale masterworks composed consecutively in 1787 during the summit of Mozart’s creative powers. Quintet No. 4 was composed when Mozart’s father was dying. Tchaikovsky wrote about the third movement, “No one else has ever known how to interpret so beautifully in music the feeling of resignation and inconsolable sorrow.”  

Like Mozart, Franz Schubert was a brilliant, prolific composer whose life was cut short in his 30s. When facing incurable disease, Schubert transformed his despair into composing powerful masterpieces, including String Quartet No. 14 Death and the Maiden. The emotional breadth, bold symphonic scale, forceful urgency, and imaginative variations in this quartet all contribute to its reputation as being among the finest ever written. 

All seats for the concert are general admission and are available through ticketswest.com or at the door. Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors, or free for persons under 18 and students with ID.

The Spokane String Quartet returns to the Bing Crosby Theater stage at 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 28, with music by Beethoven, pioneering Black woman composer Florence Price and Felix Mendelssohn. 

Joining the SSQ for the concert is guest John Michel, cello professor at Central Washington University and founding member of the Kairos, formerly known as the Kairos String Quartet, the resident ensemble at CWU.

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In the first decade after Beethoven arrived in Vienna, he assimilated and mastered the  classical string quartet form developed by Haydn and brought to heights of perfection with  Haydn and Mozart. Opus 18 contains Beethoven’s first 6 string quartets and represents the  “Classical Phase” of his quartet writing genius. Even at this early stage, Beethoven was  exploring new directions highlighted by the sharply contrasting emotional moods and  tempos in the finale of Quartet No. 6, where slow depictions of “Melancholy” alternate with  variations of a faster joyful dance. 

Florence Price (1887-1953) stated that she had two handicaps in having her music  recognized: “those of sex and race.”She overcame those obstacles, becoming the first  Black woman composer to have her work (Symphony No. 1) performed by a major  orchestra, the Chicago Symphony in 1933. Price infused the classical tradition with  elements inspired by African American spirituals and folk music, featured in the second  movement of String Quartet No. 1. 

Felix Mendelssohn’s deeply beloved sister Fanny was also a talented composer and  pianist, and trusted critic of his compositions. Felix was devastated by her unexpected  death at age 41 by stroke, and he expressed his grief musically with String Quartet No. 6, a  Requiem for Fanny. The outer movements of agitation enclose a tender core “song without  words” in the third movement. This powerful masterpiece was his last completed major  work. His death at age 38 came six months after Fanny’s, also by stroke.

All seats are general admission. Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and free for persons under 18 and students with ID. Tickets are available at the door, or click here to purchase tickets online.

Black History Month gets off to an early start Sunday, Jan. 28, with the Spokane String Quartet’s concert featuring pioneering Black woman composer Florence Price.

The concert begins at 3 p.m. at The Bing Crosby Theater. Click here to purchase tickets.

Florence Price (1887-1953) was born in Arkansas and educated at the New England Conservatory of Music. She was a classical composer, pianist, organist and music teacher. She was the first African-American woman to be recognized as a symphonic composer, and the first to have a composition played by a major orchestra. She composed over 300 works: four symphonies, four concertos, and a number of choral works, art songs, chamber music and music for solo instruments.

The Jan. 28 program includes Price’s String Quartet No. 1 in G Major. Also on the program are Beethoven’s String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 18, No. 6, and Mendelssohn’s String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 80.

Composers from France and the French West Indies are at the forefront at the Spokane String Quartet concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 19, at The Bing Crosby Theater.

Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and free for under 18 and students with ID. All seats are general admission. Click here to buy tickets.

This concert highlights the string quartets of three French composers, Joseph Bologne (Chevalier de  Saint-Georges), Gabriel Faure and Maurice Ravel.  

French-Senegalese Bologne was a larger-than-life figure who is regarded as the first composer of African  descent to receive universal critical acclaim. He was contemporary with Haydn and Mozart, and in fact  helped commission and conduct the premiere of Haydn’s “Paris” symphonies. Bologne’s life spanned  tumultuous times from the last years of the French monarchy to the French Revolution. Despite the  racism that he faced, his talents as a virtuoso violinist, conductor, dancer and master swordsman paved  the way for being welcomed in the court of Marie Antoinette, and then serving the Revolution as a  citizen soldier. 

Both Ravel and Faure only composed a single string quartet. Ravel’s “Neoclassical” quartet infuses  traditional classical form and triad-based harmony with modern explorations. Ravel composed his string  quartet at the age of 28 and dedicated it to his teacher Faure. The piece is widely considered his first  masterpiece. Gabriel Faure’s string quartet was to be his last composition, written while he was deaf  and ailing, just months before his death. The music has been described as “austere,” “distilled,” “an  intimate meditation on last things,” “aiming beyond earthly summits” and filled with “themes that seem  constantly to be drawn skywards.”

Composers from France and the French West Indies are at the forefront at the Spokane String Quartet concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 19, at The Bing Crosby Theater.

Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and free for under 18 and students with ID. All seats are general admission. Click here to buy tickets.

The concert opens with String Quartet in G Minor by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Born on the island of Guadeloupe, he was a French-Senegalese violinist, conductor and composer, a fine dancer and regarded as one of the greatest swordsman in Europe.

Also on the program are Gabriel Faure’s String Quartet in E Minor, Op. 121, and Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major.

The Spokane String Quartet opens its 2023-24 season at 3 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 24, at the Fox Theater with brilliant young pianist Evren Ozel and works by Brahms, Schumann and Chopin.

Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for seniors and free for under 18 and students with ID. Click here to buy tickets. All seats are general admission.

American pianist Evren Ozel has established himself as a musician of “refined restraint” (Third Coast Review), combining fluent virtuosity with probing, thoughtful interpretations. Having performed extensively in the United States and abroad, Evren is the recipient of a 2023 Avery Fisher Career Grant, 2022 Salon de Virtuosi Career Grant, and is currently represented by Concert Artists Guild as an Ambassador Prize Winner of their 2021 Victor Elmaleh Competition. Since his debut at age 11 with the Minnesota Orchestra, Evren has gone on to be a featured soloist with the Cleveland Orchestra, Jacksonville Symphony and the Boston Pops Orchestra. In the 2023-24 season, he will record Mozart Concertos with the Radio Symphonieorchester Wien and conductor Howard Griffiths for the Next Generation Mozart Soloists project based in Zurich, Switzerland.

Sunday’s program features:

• Johannes Brahms: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 25
• Robert Schumann: Piano Quintet in E-Flat Major, Op. 44
• Frederic Chopin: Solo piano pieces

The concert features two masterpieces of chamber music – Johannes Brahms’ Piano Quartet No. 1, and Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet. In many ways, these compositions are united by Robert’s wife Clara, a brilliant pianist of the time who performed the piano part at the public premiere for both pieces. Much has been written about the depth of the friendship and artistic inspiration between Robert, Clara and Johannes. Robert dedicated his Quintet to Clara, and Brahms claimed that he thought of Clara in every measure while composing the Piano Quartet. Sunday’s concert explores the creativity and passion of these Romantic Era composers as they emerge from the shadow cast by Beethoven.