The Zelter String Quartet: Allan Hon, Gallia Kastner, Kyle Gilner, and Nao Kubota
The Zelter String Quartet – back from its dazzling gold-prize winning performance at the 2021 Chesapeake Music International Chamber Music Competition – will play Mozart’s beloved “Hunt” string quartet, among other offerings, at the Ebenezer Theater on October 23rd. The concert will also be live-streamed. The “Hunt” is the fourth of Mozart’s six quartets dedicated to Franz Joseph Haydn. Besides being a mainstay in the canon of classical music, the quartet achieved even greater popularity when it was included in the movie soundtracks of The Adventures of Huck Finn, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Star Trek: Insurrection.
Mozart completed “The Hunt Quartet” in 1785, and it has remained at the core of the quartet repertory ever since. Officially known as the String Quartet in B-flat Major, K. 458, it is easily the most popular of the six “Haydn quartets” that Mozart wrote. Its nickname, supplied by someone other than Mozart, refers to the opening theme of the first movement which suggests a simple hunting call, although it is the first and second violins that mimic the hunting horns. The elegant first movement concludes with a breathtaking finale. The middle movement – a stately minuet with an animated trio – has a marvelous dialogue between first violin and cello. The third movement – an adagio – is both tender and seemingly vulnerable but ultimately powerful. The energetic finale returns to the “hunt” theme and invokes again the excitement of the chase.
The Zelter String Quartet’s program will also include Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and traditional Nordic folk music.
The Zelter String Quartet
October 23, 2021 at 7:30 PM
Ebenezer Theater, Easton
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