The Lied Center for Performing Arts and Sheldon Friends of Chamber Music will celebrate their joint anniversaries with a spectacular program joining two internationally renowned ensembles, the Escher and Chiara string quartets at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 8 at the Lied Center.
Tickets, at $35 for adults, are available at http://www.liedcenter.org, at the Lied Center Box Office, 301 N. 12th St., or by phone at 402-472-4747. Tickets to most Lied Center shows are available to students for 50 percent off.
Escher and Chiara, with featured artists Norman Fischer (cello) and Nadia Sirota (violin), will perform a program titled “2,4,6,8,” a collection of duos, quartets and sextets, culminating with the Mendelssohn Octet. The Escher Quartet will make its Lied Center debut, along with Fischer and Sirota.
“We are delighted to have this historic joining of two classical ensembles, celebrated around the world, on the Lied Center stage, especially in this very special 25th anniversary season,” said Ann Chang, artistic director of the Lied Center. “The Lied Center presents all genres of the performance arts but our classical music programming is particularly robust this year with artists like Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and, of course, the fine musicians that comprise these exceptional quartets.”
Called “a group to watch” by the Washington Post, the Escher String Quartet has received acclaim for its individual sound, inspired artistic decisions and unique cohesiveness. Championed by members of the Emerson String Quartet, the group was named BBC New Generation Artists for 2010-2012. Having completed a three-year residency as artists of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s “CMS Two” program, the ensemble has performed at prestigious venues and festivals around the world, including Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd Street Y and Symphony Space in New York, Kennedy Center, the Louvre, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, City of London Festival and more.
“A one-woman contemporary-classical commissioning machine” (Pitchfork), violist Sirota is best known for her singular sound and expressive execution, coaxing works and collaborations from the likes of Nico Muhly, Daniel Bjarnason, Valgeir Sigurosson, Judd Greenstein, Marcos Balter and Missy Mazzoli. Her debut album, “First Things First” (New Amsterdam Records), was named a record of the year by the New York Times and her follow-up, “Baroque” (Bedroom Community and New Amsterdam), has been called “beautiful music of a higher order than anything else you will hear this year” by PopMatters, an online magazine of cultural criticism and analysis.
Renowned for bringing fresh excitement to traditional string quartet repertoire as well as for creating insightful interpretations of new music, the Chiara String Quartet captivates its audiences throughout the country. UNL’s quartet in residence at the university’s Chamber Music Institute, it has established itself as among America’s most respected ensembles, lauded for its “highly virtuosic, edge-of-the-seat playing” (Boston Globe). Now in its 15th season, the Chiara Quartet is moving forward by taking a cue from the past. Harkening back to a tradition that is centuries old and still common among soloists, it has adopted a new way of performing: from memory, without printed sheet music. For almost all of the quartet’s upcoming concerts, it will perform by heart. After spending countless hours working towards playing its repertoire from memory, the members of the quarter now say they feel that the sheet music is a distraction to the performance, instead of an aid.
