Talich Quartet featuring Orion Weiss, piano

Saturday, February 23, 2013 | 8:00 pm

Reynolds Industries Theater

The best qualities of Old Europe and new America unite in this concert of Czech chamber music, a noble tradition personified in the Talich Quartet. With a roster established in 1964 and then refreshed in the early nineties, the Talich is sought around the world for its “handsome and refined sound” (Washington Post). The Quartet finds a perfect complement in the reflective young American Orion Weiss, a pianist of “exceptionally clean technique with virtuosity to spare” (Washington Post).

This uniquely structured concert gives both the Talich and Weiss ample space to showcase their individual talents: the Quartet on two zeniths of Czech chamber music, Dvorakk’s Cypresses and Janacek’s Kreutzer Sonata; the pianist on Bohuslav Martinu’s nervy Fantasie and Toccata for solo piano, a tour de force he dispatches with great conviction. All the musicians then come together to conclude with an undisputed masterpiece of the string quintet form, Dvorak’s Piano Quintet in A Major.

Program