Verona Quartet - Visiting Artist Series

Verona Quartet begins the program with Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, op. 135, one of his final works that some consider a culmination. After a brief pause the quartet takes on Karol Szymanowski’s String Quartet No. 2, op. 56, a piece that highlights the composer’s original style. After an intermission they present String Quartet in E Minor, op. 44, No. 2 by Felix Mendelssohn, a vibrant work that exemplifies the composer’s genius and wit.

About Verona Quartet
Hailed by The New York Times as an “outstanding ensemble,” the Verona Quartet—winner of the 2015 Concert Artists Guild Competition—has quickly earned a stellar reputation as one of the most compelling young quartets in chamber music today for their “interpretive strength…robust characterization [and] commanding resonance” (Calgary Herald).

2017-18 season highlights include the Verona Quartet’s Kennedy Center debut presented by Washington Performing Arts, as well as concerts spanning from New York (Museum of Modern Art and Merkin Concert Hall) to Vancouver (Vancouver Recital Society) to San Francisco (Morrison Arts Series, SFSU).  They also perform for Chamber Music Northwest’s Winter and Summer 2018 Festivals in Portland, OR, as part of CMNW’s innovative Protégé program, where they collaborate with eminent chamber musicians. In addition, the Verona Quartet has been selected by New York’s Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts for its prestigious Ernst Stiefel String Quartet Residency, encompassing performances, educational residencies, as well as a concert at the 2018 Caramoor Summer Festival.

Selected by Musical America as “New Artists of the Month” in May 2016, the group has garnered worldwide recognition by winning top prizes at international competitions across four continents: the Wigmore Hall International String Quartet Competition, London; the 8th Osaka International Chamber Music Competition, Japan; the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition, Australia; and in the US at the Coleman, Fischoff, and Chesapeake Chamber Music Competitions, and the M-Prize International Chamber Arts Competition.

The Verona Quartet is currently the quartet-in-residence at the New England Conservatory of Music’s Professional String Quartet Training Program, under the mentorship of Paul Katz.  This two-year program also features an annual recital in Jordan Hall, as well as numerous performances in and around Boston.  This residency follows the quartet’s two seasons as Graduate Resident String Quartet at The Juilliard School, where they worked closely with members of the Juilliard String Quartet.

Along with their passionate exploration of the rich repertoire for string quartet, the Verona Quartet are equally committed to expanding the canon by playing music by living composers.  In 2017, they premiered three new works written for them: Michael Gilbertson’s String Quartet at Weill Recital Hall; Sebastian Currier’s Etude 2: Interactions and Lullaby 1: Pulsing at New York’s Chelsea Music Festival, in collaboration with Boosey & Hawkes; and Canadian composer Robert Aitken’s Lunenburg (Shadows VII), commissioned by the Lunenburg Academy of Music Performance, Nova Scotia, in honor of Canada’s 150th Birthday.  In June 2018, they premiere a new work by Julia Adolphe at the Caramoor Festival, commissioned through the Stiefel Residency.

The Verona Quartet has performed worldwide in venues such as Wigmore Hall (London, UK), Izumi Hall (Osaka, Japan), the National Theatre (Abu Dhabi, UAE), Melbourne Recital Hall (Melbourne, Australia), and, in New York City, at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.  Strongly committed to education, they have been on the faculty of the Indiana University Summer String Academy as Quartet-in-Residence since 2016, and recent international educational residencies include: the Beethoven-Haus (Bonn, Germany); Oberlin Conservatory of Music; New York University-Abu Dhabi, and Lunenberg Academy of Music Performance (Nova Scotia, Canada).  They have also appeared on National Public Radio, WQXR, WFMT, The Weekly Special on PBS, and Abu Dhabi Classical FM.

The Verona Quartet’s members hail from the USA, UK, Canada and Singapore. They were the inaugural Graduate Quartet-in-Residence at Indiana University, where they were mentored chiefly by the Pacifica Quartet, as well as Alexander Kerr, Atar Arad, Ik-Hwan Bae and Eric Kim.  The Quartet has collaborated with artists such as Cho-Liang Lin, David Shifrin, Renee Fleming, and has worked with members of the Alban Berg, American, Brentano, Cavani, Cleveland, Guarneri, Juilliard, Tokyo and Vermeer Quartets.

More Information

https://music.williams.edu/