Attacca Quartet

Saturday, September 12, 2020 | 8:00 pm

Chamber Arts Series

Duke Performances is excited to present our Virtual Fall season – The Show Must Go Online! High-quality, commissioned films featuring artists originally slated for in-person performances will premiere on Vimeo for ticket holders. Each film, shot following local safety protocols, is made in collaboration with an audio and video crew in each artist’s home city. 

General admission tickets are $10 per presentation and Duke Student tickets are available free of charge through the support of the Provost and the Vice Provost for the Arts at Duke University. Chamber Arts Series subscriptions, including all four concerts, are available at a discount of 25% off for $30. At the time of purchase, ticket buyers will receive a unique Vimeo link to stream each performance online at the scheduled time, and then films will be available for viewing for 24 hours beyond the premiere.

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The Washington Post wrote of the Attacca Quartet: “They may be a relatively young ensemble, but already they come very close to epitomizing the string quartet ideal: four strikingly individual players with the ability to speak eloquently in one voice.” In 2019, the Attacca, passionate advocates for new music, became the first ensemble to release an album exclusively featuring works by composer Caroline Shaw, a North Carolina native who remains the youngest recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Music. NPR described the album, Orange, as “a love letter to the string quartet,” and it went on to win a GRAMMY.

This season the Attacca Quartet makes its Duke Performances and Chamber Arts Society debut, kicking off with one of Orange’s compositions, Plan and Elevation. This piece, a sonic exploration of structure and architecture, imports fragments from String Quartet, one of Maurice Ravel’s earliest works. The Attacca closes with Beethoven’s op. 130 and its grand yet demanding Große Fuge finale. After all, Beethoven, had he wanted to, could have written into the Große Fuge score, over and over again, the musical directive: “Attacca!”

— Freya Parr

Program

"Their playing is exuberant, funky and more exactingly nuanced.”