Calidore String Quartet
Making their Washington, DC, debut, the Los Angeles-based Calidore Quartet has performed alongside renowned artists like Joshua Bell and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. A young and artistically well-rounded ensemble, they perform works by Haydn, Beethoven, and American composer Caroline Shaw.
Artist Images
Program
Making their Washington, DC, debut, the Los Angeles-based Calidore String Quartet has performed alongside renowned artists like Joshua Bell and Jean-Yves Thibaudet. A young and artistically well-rounded ensemble, they perform Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major, Op. 20, No. 4, and the String Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2 by Beethoven. Complementing these benchmarks of the canon is Entr’acte, a string quartet inspired by Haydn and written by American composer Caroline Shaw, who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her revelatory Partita for 8 Voices.
Program
Joseph Haydn (1732–1809)
Quartet in F minor, Op. 20, No. 5
Allegro moderato
Menuetto
Adagio
Finale: Fuga due Soggetti
Caroline Shaw (b. 1982)
Entr’acte {minuet & trio} (2011)
Intermission
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
Quartet in E minor, Op. 59, No. 2
Allegro
Molto Adagio
Allegretto
Finale: Presto
About the Artists
Described as “a miracle of unified thought…” (La Presse, Montreal) and “nothing short of a revelation” (Calgary Herald), the Calidore String Quartet has established an international reputation for its informed, polished and captivating performances. Recent performances include debuts at prestigious festivals including Verbier and Ravinia, the Schneider Concert Series (New York), and a feature as Young Artist-in-Residence on American Public Media’s ‘Performance Today.’ The Calidore has collaborated with many esteemed artists and ensembles including Joshua Bell, Menahem Pressler, Quatuor Ebene, Angel Romero and the Calder Quartet.
Formed at the Colburn Conservatory of Music in Los Angeles in 2010, the Calidore String Quartet has already amassed several grand prizes in American chamber music competitions including Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs. Internationally the Calidore captured top prizes at the 2012 ARD Munich International String Quartet Competition and the 2012 Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition. The quartet’s performances and interviews were broadcast on Bayerischer Rundfunk (Munich) and Norddeutscher Rundfunk (Hamburg) and the group was also featured on German national television as part of a documentary produced by ARD public broadcasting.
Highlights of the Quartet’s 2013/2014 season included a collaboration with famed pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet in Los Angeles to perform the Dvořák Piano Quintet in A Major, a return to the renowned Schneider Concert Series in New York and the group’s debut in Asia at the Kumho Arts Center in Seoul, Korea. Other engagements include a tour of Florida and Maine, a featured spot on Rob Kapilow’s series ‘What Makes it Great?’ for NPR and numerous performances throughout Southern California. The summer of 2014 marked the Calidore String Quartet’s inaugural season as the quartet-in-residence at the Bellingham Festival of Music.
Past summers included residencies and fellowships at the Banff Centre, Verbier Festival Academy, Aspen Music Festival and McGill International String Quartet Academy. In 2013, the Calidore worked closely with composer Edward Nesbit and premiered his new work “Night Dances” at the Verbier Festival, a performance that was broadcast on Medici.tv. In 2012 the Calidore made its European debut at the esteemed Emilia Romagna Festival in Italy.
Commitment to music education drives the Calidore String Quartet to sharing its passion for chamber music with students and audiences. This has taken the form of pre-concert talks, post-concert Q&A’s, classroom visits, public school assemblies, traditional master classes and multi-day community residencies. In May 2012, the Quartet partnered with the Bellingham Music Festival and the Whatcom Symphony Orchestra (Bellingham, WA) for a 2-week residency including over twenty concerts in the public schools of Northwest Washington. The Calidore String Quartet has studied closely with such luminaries as Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, Guillaume Sutre, Gunter Pichler, Gehard Schulz, Gabor Takacs Nagy, Paul Coletti, Ronald Leonard, and the Quatuor Ebène.
Using an amalgamation of ‘California’ and ‘doré’ (French for ‘golden’), the ensemble’s name represents a reverence for the diversity of culture and the strong support it has received from its home base in Los Angeles, California, the ‘golden’ state. The Calidore String Quartet aims to present performances that enable the group to share the passion and joy of the string quartet repertoire with audiences all over the world.
Watch and Listen
The Calidore Quartet performs the first movement of the String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor, Op. 13 by Mendelssohn.