ABOUT THIS PERFORMANCE
Our historic 80th season concludes with the visionary Brentano Quartet in two of the greatest masterworks in the literature. Join us for a guided journey from the high seriousness of Beethoven’s 13th string quartet, written in the final years of the composer’s life, to the youthful celebration found in the 22-year-old Franz Schubert’s Trout Quintet, performed here with two of chamber music’s most sought-after collaborators, Jonathan Biss and Joseph Conyers.
PROGRAM
Beethoven: String Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130
Schubert: Quintet for Piano and Strings in A major (“Trout”)
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Brentano Quartet
Serena Canin, violin
Mark Steinberg, violin
Misha Amory, viola
Nina Lee, cello
Since its inception in 1992, the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. Within a few years of its formation, the Quartet garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and was also honored in the U.K. with the Royal Philharmonic Award for Most Outstanding Debut. Since then, the Quartet has concertized widely, performing in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress in Washington, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Suntory Hall in Tokyo and the Sydney Opera House. The Quartet has recorded works by Mozart and Schubert for Azica Records, and Beethoven’s late Quartets for the Aeon label. In 2012, they provided the central music for the critically-acclaimed independent film A Late Quartet. Since 2014, the Brentano Quartet has served as Artists-in-Residence at the Yale School of Music.
“The Brentano String Quartet is something special…Their music-making is private, delicate and fresh, but by its very intimacy and importance it seizes attention.” “As usual with this ensemble, the performances were full of life…They seem to be listening to the same heartbeat.”
Jonathan Biss, piano
Praised as “a superb pianist and also an eloquent and insightful music writer” (The Boston Globe) with “impeccable taste and a formidable technique” (The New Yorker), Jonathan Biss is a world-renowned educator and critically-acclaimed author, and has appeared internationally as a soloist with the Los Angeles and New York Philharmonics, the Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco Symphonies, and the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras as well as the London Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw, the Philharmonia, and Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, among many other ensembles. Biss is also Co-Artistic Director alongside Mitsuko Uchida at the Marlboro Music Festival, where he has spent fifteen summers.
In the 2023-24 season, Biss returns to perform with the Saint Louis Symphony and Stéphane Dénève, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Ramón Tebar, and the Philadelphia Orchestra and Yannick Nézet-Seguin at Carnegie Hall. Throughout the season, Biss will present a new project that pairs solo piano works by Schubert with new compositions by Alvin Singleton, Tyson Gholston Davis, and Tyshawn Sorey at San Francisco Performances, Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner museum, among many others. Biss continues his collaboration with Mitsuko Uchida featuring Schubert’s music for piano 4-hands at Carnegie Hall and more. He will also appear with the Brentano Quartet at Chamber Music Detroit, Club the Royal Conservatory of Toronto, and more.
European engagements this season include performances with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Karina Canellakis and the BBC National Orchestra and Ryan Bancroft. Biss reunites with the Elias String Quartet at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, Cockermouth Music Society, and Wigmore Hall. In the new year, Biss will perform works by György Kurtág and Schubert at the Sala Verdi in Milan. He concludes his European season with the Orchestre de chambre de Paris and conductor Pekka Kuusisto and Timo Andres’s The Blind Banister, part of his ongoing Beethoven/5 commissioning project.
“... a pianist whose probing, incisive, and deeply considered performances are consistently challenging and rewarding.”
Joseph H. Conyers, bass
Joseph H. Conyers was appointed assistant principal bassist of the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2010 after tenures with the Atlanta Symphony, Santa Fe Opera, and Grand Rapids Symphony, where he was principal bass. He has served as acting associate principal bass of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 2017. Conyers has performed with numerous orchestras as soloist across the U.S. and is an artist of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. Recognized for his artistic and social entrepreneurial endeavors and as an advocate for music education, his awards include the Sphinx Organization’s Medal of Excellence (2019) and Musical America’s 30 Top Professionals—Innovators, Independent Thinkers, and Entrepreneurs (2018).
“a lyrical musician who plays with authenticity that transcends mere technique,”
