St. Lawrence String Quartet

Saturday, December 13, 2014 | 8:00 pm

Baldwin Auditorium

Stanford University ensemble-in-residence St. Lawrence String Quartet return to Duke Performances with their trademark combination of incisive playing and “irresistible exuberance” (Boston Globe). This quartet is “remarkable not simply for the quality of their music making, exalted as it is, but for the joy they take in the act of connection” (New Yorker).

The evening opens with Haydn’s “Joke” quartet, a surprise-filled work that turns audience expectations upside down. This is followed by the third quartet of Erich Korngold, a composer who fled Nazi tyranny for Hollywood in 1938. After writing a series of successful film scores, Korngold fell silent until the waning days of the war, when he wrote this dazzling composition. The program ends with Bartók’s fourth quartet, inspired by Hungarian folk music, but also conveying a modern sound that employs muted strings, pizzicati, and glissandi.

Program