DaPonte String Quartet is releasing videos in increments of a concert filmed earlier this year. 

Part one: Beethoven String Quartet No.5 in A Major, is now available at onstage.daponte.org

Filmed at Rockport Opera House in January 2021, the March 13 concert release is a work by the 20th century Czech composer, Erwin Schulhoff. Schulhoff’s String Quartet No 1 is a powerful piece with elements of jazz influence, dance rhythms, and grotesquely melancholy strains, said DSQ, in a news release. Schulhoff was influenced by the Dada movement, and believed that “absolute art is revolution.” Once the Nazis began to rise to power, the Jewish composer was no longer able to perform in Germany, his compositions were verboten. He was labeled a degenerate, his music blacklisted. After his return to Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic), his life was threatened by the German occupation. Schulhoff was granted Russian citizenship, which would allow him to emigrate to relative safety. Before he could leave, he was arrested and deported to a German concentration camp. Approximately one year later, he died of tuberculosis in Wulzburg camp, in 1942.

This quartet is a 4 movement work. It contains interesting harmonies and requires unusual techniques of its performers, according to DSQ. It is powerfully rhythmic, and forcefully driven. Parts of the second movement are ethereal and wispy, giving way to the shocking and sudden elements of the third movement. The final movement may represent a foreshadowing of Schulhoff’s death. The foreboding music sounds a bit like a clock winding down, indicating the impending madness, leaving the silence of having nothing left.

A prolific and unusual composer, Schulhoff’s chamber music works may be his most intense and innovative compositions.

Additional premiere dates:

March 13 - Schulhoff: String Quartet No 1

April 3 - Shostakovich: String Quartet No 8 in C minor Op 110

April 24 - Mozart: String Quartet in C Major K 465 “Dissonance”

May 15 - Stravinsky: Three pieces for String Quartet

June 5 - Ravel: String Quartet in F Major

All of these events will be available at  onstage.daponte.org

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Feel free to contact Executive Director, Lisa Westkaemper, at 207-315-7105, or lisa@daponte.org. Check out the website at www.daponte.org.  

Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3U67GH4mWSjgGDxx5d4_Kg