Concert Preview—

Award-Winning & Precedent-Setting

String Quartet Will Close NFoM Season

The Alexander String Quartet’s international career was assured in 1985 when it won both First Prize and Audience Prize at the London International Competition with performances that prompted Yejudi Menuhin to proclaim: “It was unbelievably good Beethoven … in conception, musicality, balance of voices, respect for the score, humor, pathos [and] emotional projection. There was absolutely nothing missing.”

Now a Newtown audience will have the opportunity to experience the same superlative interpretations when Alexander String Quartet closes the 23rd season for Newtown Friends of Music on Sunday, April 29, at 3 pm, with a concert at Edmond Town Hall.

Recognized as innovative educators, the quartet is the resident ensemble of Baruch College in New York City. Newtown students benefited earlier this week from the ensemble’s years of experience in introducing classical music to school children. Newtown Friends of Music hosted a visit by the quartet at Newtown Middle School on Monday for the second of this season’s two outreach programs hosted by the non-profit music organization.

Violinists Ge-Fang Yang and Frederick Lifsitz, violist Paul Yarbrough and cellist Sandy Wilson are the members of Alexander String Quartet. The group formed in 1981 and is therefore celebrating its 20th anniversary this spring.

In 1982 the group became the first string quartet to win the Concert Artists Guild Competition. Since then it has made numerous recordings, has maintained an active concert schedule, and has been prominently featured the trade publication The Strad. Last year the quartet presented an all-Beethoven marathon at Lincoln Center, when it performed all 16 of the composer’s string quartets at Avery Fisher Hall.

In addition, the quartet has invented “Beethoven by Request,” a three-work performance in which the audience is invited to suggest a Beethoven piece for the artists to play, with one piece from the early period of the composer’s career, the second from the middle and the third from the late period.

For its concert on April 29, Alexander String Quartet will perform String Quartet No 1 in F Major, Opus 18, followed by String Quartet No 11 in F minor, Opus 95 (“Serioso”). Following intermission the program will conclude with String Quartet No 15 in A minor, Opus 132, a work from Beethoven’s final creative life. There will be an informal reception following the concert with the performers.

Tickets for Newtown Friends of Music concerts are $14 for adults and $12 for students and seniors. Children between the ages of 5 and 14 are admitted free when accompanied by a ticket-holding adult.

The box office will open one hour before the performance starts, and parking is free and available behind Edmond Town Hall, 45 Main Street in Newtown. For further information including ticket information call Newtown Friends of Music at 426-6470.