Telegraph Quartet performs Beethoven

Now celebrating its 10th season together, the Telegraph Quartet formed with an equal passion for the standard chamber music repertoire and contemporary works alike. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. For their Newport debut, the Quartet explores compositions that may never have been fully experienced by the creators themselves. Rebecca Clarke, a truly accomplished composer of the 20th century, composed her Poem for String Quartet but would never see the work published and disseminated in her lifetime. Beethoven had begun losing his hearing by his late 20s and by the time the good-natured “Harp” Quartet was composed, its cheery quality belied the composer’s 11-year-long struggle with hearing loss that would have kept him from fully experiencing this work. Similarly, Smetana would not have been able to even hear his first string quartet at all, as he fell victim to severe hearing loss in 1874. His autobiographical string quartet, for all its joy and enthusiasm, ends with a piercing e-string note that denotes the onset of that hearing loss two years before the quartet’s creation.

Program
Clarke Poem for String Quartet
Beethoven String Quartet No. 10 in E-flat Major, Op. 74
Smetana String Quartet No. 1 in E minor, From My Life