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LA JOLLA SUMMERFEST 2010 — AUGUST 20-24

The Orion String Quartet presents three concerts at this summer's La Jolla Summerfest, a nationally-recognized chamber music festival featuring over 70 world-class artists and ensembles performing concerts from August 6-August 27, 2010. Figuring prominently in the Orion's schedule this year is the August 20 West Coast Premiere of Brett Dean's Epitaphs for String Quintet, in which Mr. Dean performs viola along with the Orion String Quartet. Additionally, the ensemble performs Mendelssohn's String Quintet in A Major with violist Cynthia Phelps on August 21, and Schumann's String Quartet in A Minor on August 24.

For more information, visit www.ljms.org/SummerFest-2010

Friday, August 20 at 7:30pm

BRETT DEAN: Epitaphs for String Quintet (West Coast Premiere)
Orion String Quartet and Brett Dean, viola

Saturday, August 21 at 7:30pm

MENDELSSOHN: String Quintet in A Major, Op. 18
Orion String Quartet and Cynthia Phelps, viola

Tuesday, August 24 at 7:30pm

SCHUMANN: String Quartet in A Minor, Op. 41, No. 1
Orion String Quartet

SANTA FE CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL 2010 — AUGUST 8-16

The Orion String Quartet performs in eight concerts during the 38th annual Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, running from July 18-August 23, 2010.

Additional details to be announced. For more information, visit www.sfcmf.org

Sunday, August 8 and Monday, August 9 at 6:00pm

MOZART: Serenade No. 12 for Winds, K. 388
CHINARY: UNG AKASA: "Formless Spiral" (2010 Co-commission)
SMETANA: String Quartet, "From My Life"

William Barnewitz, Nancy Goeres, Robert Ingliss, Julie Landsman, Todd Levy, Orion String Quartet, Real Quiet, Michael Rusinek, Milan Turkovic, Susan Ung, Liang Wang, Wu Man

Wednesday, August 11 at 6:00 pm

SCHUBERT: Duo for Piano & Violin, D. 574
STEVEN STUCKY: Piano Quintet (2010 Co-commission)
MOZART: Clarinet Quintet, K. 581

Ani Kavafian, Anne-Marie McDermott, OPUS ONE, Orion String Quartet, David Shifrin

Thursday, August 12 at 12:00pm

PROKOFIEV: Sonata for Two Violins
WEINBERG: Sonata for Clarinet & Piano
HAYDN: String Quartet No. 64 in D Major

Ani Kavafian, Ida Kavafian, Anne-Marie McDermott, Orion String Quartet, David Shifrin

Thursday, August 12 at 6:00pm

SCHUBERT: Duo for Piano & Violin, D. 574
STEVEN STUCKY: Piano Quintet (2010 Co-commission)
MOZART: Clarinet Quintet, K. 581

Ani Kavafian, Anne-Marie McDermott, OPUS ONE, Orion String Quartet, David Shifrin

Friday, August 13 at 12:00pm

Youth Concert

Orion String Quartet and David Shifrin

Sunday, August 15 at 6:00pm

BEETHOVEN: Piano Quartet, Op. 16
BRETT DEAN: Epitaphs, for string quintet (2010 Co-commission)
SCHUMANN: Piano Quartet

Brett Dean, OPUS ONE, Orion String Quartet

Monday, August 16 at 6:00pm

BEETHOVEN: Piano Quartet, Op. 16
BRETT DEAN: Epitaphs, for string quintet (2010 Co-commission)
SCHUMANN: Piano Quartet

Brett Dean, OPUS ONE, Orion String Quartet

GLOWING REVIEWS FROM ORION STRING QUARTET'S
2010 TOUR WITH PETER SERKIN

NEW YORK TIMES: April 20, 2010
Music in Review: Orion String Quartet and Peter Serkin
by Jim Oestreich

It's not quite true that everything Brahms touched turned to symphony. But his Piano Quintet in F minor certainly comes close, at least as heard in the old recording by Sviatoslav Richter and the Borodin Quartet, and as typically played today.

The pianist Peter Serkin and the Orion String Quartet seemed to be trying something different with it on Sunday afternoon at the 92nd Street Y, taking the edge off the first-movement tempo, for example, and stressing the lyricism of individual lines. In short, they seemed to be trying to make it bona fide chamber music.

The lighter weight and an almost laid-back quality at times took some getting used to, but there were many lovely moments. And there was still plenty of Brahmsian heft and emphasis where nothing less would do.

The Orion players - Daniel and Todd Phillips, violinists; Steven Tenenbom, violist; and Timothy Eddy, cellist - hewed to a mostly Germanic theme over all, with a first half consisting of the Contrapunctus No. 1 from Bach's "Art of Fugue"; Leon Kirchner's String Quartet No. 4 (a late work, from 2006, still heavily influenced by the composer's studies with Schoenberg); and Beethoven's Opus 74 String Quartet ("Harp").

The program notes spoke of interconnectedness among the works, and the performances bore out that concept, tending in each case to stress the horizontal element, counterpoint, over the vertical, harmony.

Not that Mr. Kirchner's magnificent chords, as Daniel Phillips described them from the stage, were slighted, let alone those of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.

THE DEMOCRAT AND CHRONICLE (Rochester, NY): April 13, 2010
Orion String Quartet's Chemistry Changes to Fit Song
by Anna Reguero

The Orion String Quartet, the quartet in residence at Lincoln Center in New York City, can be a chameleon, changing itself to fit the music at hand. The effect is partly accomplished by Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, who rotate the first and second violin chairs, and both have individualistic styles.

On Sunday's performance in Kilbourn Hall, it was also a guest musician who brought out the Orion Quartet's many colors. Pianist Peter Serkin joined the quartet for a performance of Brahms' Quintet in F Minor, and changed the entire chemistry of the quartet for the concert's second half. With Serkin, the ensemble had a kind of abandon that it seemed to avoid earlier in the concert.

The first half - with Daniel Phillips in the first violin chair and also Steven Tenenbom on viola and Timothy Eddy on the cello - was extremely refined and clean.

The separations and lifts between accentuated bow strokes in the "Contrapunctus I" from Art of the Fugue by Bach were crystalline and synchronized. In the Beethoven String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74 "Harp," the quartet was admirably balanced, giving equal weight to melody line and underneath motor. The work's defining finger plucking, called pizzicato, rolled around the ensemble with flow and aplomb.

The Orion String Quartet even approached Kirchner's latest String Quartet No. 4, in which the composer writes dramatically and lyrically within a strident harmonic language, with decisive ensemble work and molded dynamics.

It all changed when Serkin sat down with the ensemble.

As soon as the piano part picked up speed, you could see Serkin's cheeks jiggle as he hunched down and dove into his part with intensity. The quartet, with Serkin, broke out into Brahms' fiery melodies without restraint. Todd Phillips, who took over the first violin chair, is a lively and bold player, too, which helped the quartet launch into a more aggressive mode.

However dynamic the quartet performed with Serkin there, Serkin was unusually detached, only looking at the ensemble out of the corner of his eye to catch the ensemble in key moments.

SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE: March 3, 2010
by David Bratman

With pianist Peter Serkin as its guest artist, the Orion String Quartet brought a pantheon of composers to its Stanford Lively Arts concert on Wednesday at Dinkelspiel Auditorium: Bach. Beethoven. Brahms. ... And Leon Kirchner.

Which of these names doesn't quite belong with the others? Proponents of musical modernism have long tried to convince audiences that modernists like Kirchner are the worthy heirs to the Three B's. But 40 or 50 years ago they'd pursue this goal by haranguing you. Cryptic, alienated atonality was the music of our time, the critics said, and if you didn't like it, the fault was yours. That didn't go over very well.

While some voices still take that view, the rise of minimalism and neoromanticism have convinced others that times have changed. Even Leon Kirchner is now willing to meet the latest trend halfway. After some five decades of composing choppy, knotty music of the most austere modernism, in 2006 at the age of 87 he produced his String Quartet No. 4, a single, 12-minute movement of voices moving together in smooth, consonant lines: an essay in coherence rather than fragmentation. The harmonies are hardly a complete capitulation to lush romanticism, though. Kirchner carries with him his modernist past whether he wants to or not, the way a long-held image can be burned into an old computer monitor. His quartet still sounds determinedly "modern," for all that music more "advanced" than this has been written for over a century now. The applause it received at Stanford was no more than respectful.

What made this piece work in this concert, which I thought it did surprisingly well, was the performers. The Orion String Quartet are four serious-looking gentlemen who play a serious quartet. For all the grace and variation in style they gave this piece - I especially liked the sections where first violinist Daniel Phillips would turn through a series of short phrases, each echoed by the other players - they treated it as deserving of the utmost profundity and solemnity. And they performed the works surrounding it in exactly the same way, so the differences in idiom did not clash.

The program opened with a quartet realization of Contrapunctus I from Bach's great theoretical composition The Art of Fugue. Well, a fugue: How serious can you get? The contrapuntal lines gave a good opportunity to learn the players' styles. Second violinist Todd Phillips is Daniel's brother; they both play Stradivari instruments; they sound a lot alike, a firm, fairly light sound. Todd is perhaps the more emotive and lyrical of the two.

The other two players have a much darker tone. Seated on the left, as I was, facing the viola and cello, this seemed to me a bottom-heavy quartet. Timothy Eddy plays his cello (by the great 18th-century Venetian Matteo Goffriller) with the utmost crispness and clarity, rumbling out repeated bottom notes almost pianistically. Steven Tenenbom has the most unusual instrument: an oversized, 16th-century viola, one of the first modern ones ever made (by Gasparo da Salò), with a dry, antique sound.

The Beethoven Beautifully Introspective

The Kirchner was followed by Beethoven's Quartet in E-flat, Op. 74. This could have come as a cultural clash of great magnitude, for this quartet can be light, coy, and bouncy. Not this time. The Orion Quartet played with deadly earnestness. Daniel Phillips made his long solo at the end of the first movement sound like a return to Bach, and he systematically eradicated any trace of "snap" from his part in the scherzo. It seemed part of a concentrated effort to give the work a searching, introspective quality, beautiful without being overtly melodic. The performance was not without flair. Pizzicato notes were passed around with charming spontaneity, and the tone color was always compatible between the instruments while varying across the piece: cool and organlike in the slow introduction, crisp and fiery in the scherzo, with a consistently hushed sound to the final repeat and a lovely ritard at the end of the movement.

The quartet was joined by pianist Peter Serkin for Brahms' Quintet in F Minor for Piano and Strings, Op. 34. The Phillips brothers exchanged violin parts for this, with Todd as first and Daniel as second, while Serkin essentially took over Eddy's role as the energetic foundation of the ensemble. Stomping on the keys (and on the sustain pedal as well) during the louder parts, he played, like Eddy, with supreme clarity and separation of notes, as well as a marked disinclination to roll chords. Not a touch of Brahms' characteristic rumbling muddle was evident here. The strings played the opening melody of the slow movement similarly, with the notes entirely detached. This approach followed on from the opening movement, which the players took very slowly, almost cautiously. It was a strange performance, yet an oddly compelling one. Nor did it lack character or enthusiasm: bright in the middle section of the slow movement, strongly energetic in the scherzo, and entirely cheerful once the finale gets going, with distinctive melodic work from Eddy and Tenenbom.While Brahms received the most applause, all four composers on Wednesday's pantheon were treated with admirable care and attention.

CHICAGO CLASSICAL REVIEW: February 27, 2010
Orion String Quartet returns to Mandel Hall with generous program
by Lawrence A. Johnson

More than with orchestral concerts or solo recitals, string quartet programs tend to fall into a predictable pattern: a little Mozart or Haydn to start, followed by a shortish 20th-century work, and a late Romantic quartet for the grand finale.

Give credit to the Orion String Quartet for freshening up the usual scenario Friday night at Mandel Hall. The generous program offering a Bach arrangement, a recent work by Leon Kirchner, a Beethoven quartet, and closed with Brahms' Piano Quintet, with Peter Serkin joining the Orion members.

The evening began on a somber note with violist Steven Tenenbom noting that David Soyer, longtime cellist of the Guarneri String Quartet, had died Thursday, age 87, and the group was dedicating this performance to his memory.

There was no need to insert a valedictory piece since the programmed Contrapunctus I from Bach's The Art of the Fugue (arr. by Samuel Baron) made an apt elegy, performed with a restrained dignified expression.

The Orion members—violinists Daniel Phillips and Todd Phillips, violist Tenenbom and cellist Timothy Eddy—last performed on the University of Chicago series a decade ago, and it was good to have this fine, flexible ensemble back.

Leon Kirchner wrote his fourth and final string quartet for the Orion Quartet, which premiered it in 2007. The compact String Quartet No. 4 stems from a passing comment by Schoenberg, a Kirchner teacher, who noted that "one can still write a masterpiece in C major."

While the Fourth Quartet may not be a masterpiece, it certainly packs a lot into a single movement of 12 minutes, and reflects many handprints of Kirchner, who passed away last September. The knotty counterpoint and rugged rhythmic impetus segue into a pensive, introspective section, which seems to look back with mixed feelings at the past, before the opening turbulence returns. The Orion String Quartet, which has recorded all four of Kirchner's works in the genre, delivered a taut and incisive performance of this compelling music. The ensemble's lean, burnished tone is especially well suited to Beethoven, as demonstrated in an inspired performance of the "Harp" Quartet in E flat major, Op.74. Lighter in spirit than many of Beethoven's middle-period quartets, the work gains its name from the prominent pizzicatos of the first movement.

The Orion members balanced the galant and dramatic aspects with great skill, delivering a Presto of fiery intensity and beautifully textured, dynamically nuanced playing in the Adagio. Daniel Phillips, in the first violin chair for the opening half, provided impassioned advocacy in the virtuosic first-violin part, and the closing variations were vividly characterized, the throwaway coda tossed off with wry understatement.

Peter Serkin has been a longtime favorite in the University of Chicago series, and the pianist made an apt partner for the Orion members in Brahms' Piano Quintet. With Serkin's strongly projected keyboard work as the fulcrum, this was as good as Brahms playing gets, balancing the drama and lyricism, with swagger to the Scherzo, expressive depth in the Adagio and unbridled bravura to the finale. Todd Phillips, in the first chair, had moments of wayward intonation, but this was overall a thrilling performance of a thrice-familiar work.

Note: The Mandel Hall events have been rather trying this season for all audience members due to unintentional yet persistent disturbances by a few. Such was the case again Friday night, with both keening, high-pitched hearing aids and a noisy arhythmic oxygen respirator proving enormously disruptive to the performances. Concert officials did their best to try to rectify the situation including a fruitless search for the offending hearing-aid wearer before the second half. From the left-front center section, it was the ceaseless irregular respirator noise that proved most maddening, adding an unwonted jazz percussion to the evening.

Yes, people with conditions that require medical equipment should be able to attend musical events, but that right is abrogated when they create a disturbance to other audience members as well as the performers, which clearly was the case, again, on Friday night.

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