Pacifica Quartet & Anthony McGill, clarinet

Saturday, January 15, 2011 | 8:00 pm

Reynolds Industries Theater

Since their foundation in 1994, the Pacifica has won nearly every top award in chamber music, including the Naumburg. Their reputation for “luscious, edge-of-your-seat music-making” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) was confirmed in 2009, when they earned both a Grammy and Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year. Combining lyric intensity and blazing energy, their “playing [is] of the most sublime kind” (Sunday Telegraph (UK)). Here they perform with Anthony McGill, the principal clarinet of New York’s Metropolitan Opera who played at Barack Obama’s 2004 inauguration.

PROGRAM:
BEETHOVEN: String Quartet No. 1 in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1
SHOSTAKOVICH: String Quartet No. 10 in A-flat Major, Op. 118
BRAHMS: Quintet for Clarinet in B Minor, Op. 115 (with Anthony McGill, clarinet)

“They play with stupendous, breathtaking virtuosity. This was an evening of intellectual fire.”
—Sunday Times (UK) on Pacifica Quartet

“When he started to play, I said, ‘Oh my God, that’s a sound. I love that sound.'”
—Itzhak Perlman on Anthony McGill