DaPonte String Quartet will present seven area concerts of  “Dissonant and Dissident” featuring works by Mozart and Shostakovich.

Concert schedule as is follows:

Aug 14, at 7 p.m., at Rockport Opera House

Aug 19, at 7 p.m., at Robinhood Free Meetinghouse in Georgetown

Aug 21, at 4:30 p.m., at Medomak New Barn in Washington

Aug 22, at 4 p.m., at Surry Arts in the Barn

Aug 28, at 5 p.m., at St Paul’s Union Chapel, Waldoboro

Sept 12, at 7 p.m., at Old Walpole Meetinghouse 

September 25, at 5 p.m., at Ocean View Grange in Port Clyde 

Mozart: String Quartet in C Major K. 465 (“Dissonance”)   

In 1783, sixteen years before Beethoven his first symphony, Mozart composed a string quartet with an opening section surpassing in harmonic complexity anything written until Wagner. The question, then, is what Mozart is doing in the first movement of the Dissonance quartet that’s so unusual for its time?  His String Quartet in C Major, nicknamed “Dissonance”, is a masterful combination of notes - harmonic yet surprising, melodic yet startling.

Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 8                                                                                       

After his diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 1960 Dmitry Shostakovich contemplated suicide, and wrote the Eighth String Quartet in only three days (July 12-14, 1960), intended as his own epitaph. Less than seven years had elapsed since Stalin's death in 1953 ended one of the most brutal national terrors ever inflicted. The composer constructs a series of tableaux comprising an almost hysterical denunciation of the Soviet state. Some of the effects Shostakovich uses to paint the pictures are low drone notes, symbolizing electrified fences, or the barking sounds of Alsatian guard dogs against a wildly-scrambling texture evoking the running steps of people fleeing for their lives.

“Come hear these two significant works, performed by masters of their instruments, the DaPonte String Quartet,” said DSQ, in a news release. 

 Tickets available at www.daponte.org