Calidore String Quartet

Saturday, December 1, 2018 | 8:00 pm

Chamber Arts Series

Baldwin Auditorium

The Calidore String Quartet is one of the premier chamber ensembles in a generation of exciting new chamber talent. Since forming in Los Angeles, the spirited Calidore — a portmanteau of its native state and the French word for “golden” — has gathered an impressive list of honors, including a Stony Brook residency and the University of Michigan’s inaugural M-Prize. This vivacious quartet, known for its attunement to subtle dynamic shifts, was hailed by Gramophone as the “epitome of confidence and finesse, engaged in a series of engrossing, sympathetic, and intense conversations.”

For its Durham debut, the Calidore links two revered compositions with a commission from one of the country’s brightest young composers. Prokofiev wrote his String Quartet No. 2 while in wartime exile in the North Caucasus, where he embraced the region’s ancient folk melodies. It leads elegantly into First Essay: Nimrod, a Calidore commission for Pulitzer-winning North Carolinian Caroline Shaw, an ode to the writing of Marilynne Robinson that reveals the intricate possibilities within a simple tune. The Calidore closes with Schumann’s sensuous and magnetic Quartet in A Major, op.41.

Program

“The Calidore’s lustrous, beautifully matched sound, meticulous attention to detail, intellectual rigour, and worldly musicianship would be the envy of groups that have been playing together twice as long.”