Honoring their 50th Anniversary Season, the American String Quartet returns to the Austin Chamber Music Festival for a celebratory concert with long-time collaborator and legendary pianist, Anton Nel. The quartet performs a riveting program featuring Ludwig van Beethoven and Dmitri Shostakovich and will be joined by Nel in the exuberant Piano Quintet by Robert Schumann.
Subject to availability, $12 Student Rush (with student ID), $30 General Admission, $45 Preferred, and $80 Premium tickets may be purchased at the box office on the evening of the concert. The box office will open at 6:30 PM that day.
Program
String Quartet No. 2 in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2 | Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827)
- Allegro
- Adagio cantabile
- Scherzo: Allegro
- Allegro molto, quasi presto
String Quartet No. 13 in B-flat Minor, Op. 138 | Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975)
INTERMISSION
Piano Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 44 | Robert Schumann (1810–1856)
- Allegro brillante
- In modo d’una marcia. Un poco largamente
- Scherzo: Molto vivace
- Allegro ma non troppo
AMERICAN STRING QUARTET
Peter Winograd & Laurie Carney, violins
Daniel Avshalomov, viola | Wolfram Koessel, cello
with Anton Nel, piano
American String Quartet
Internationally recognized as one of the world’s finest quartets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. The Quartet celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2019, and, in its years of touring, has performed in all fifty states and has appeared in the most important concert halls worldwide. The group’s presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartók, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.
Anton Nel
Anton Nel, winner of the first prize in the 1987 Naumburg International Piano Competition at Carnegie Hall continues to enjoy a remarkable and multifaceted career that has taken him to North and South America, Europe, Asia, and South Africa. Following an auspicious debut at the age of twelve with Beethoven’s C Major Concerto after only two years of study, the Johannesburg native captured first prizes in all the major South African competitions while still in his teens, toured his native country extensively and became a well-known radio and television personality. A student of Adolph Hallis, he made his European debut in France in 1982, and in the same year graduated with highest distinction from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He came to the United States in 1983, attending the University of Cincinnati, where he pursued his Masters and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees under Bela Siki and Frank Weinstock. In addition to garnering many awards from his alma mater during this three-year period he was a prizewinner at the 1984 Leeds International Piano Competition in England and won several first prizes at the Joanna Hodges International Piano Competition in Palm Desert in 1986.