The Buffalo Chamber Music Society presents the Belcea Quartet at Kleinhans Music Hall.

Our season opens with the Belcea Quartet, a distinguished British ensemble founded by students at the Royal College of Music. Praised by the New York Times for “technically accomplished and uncommonly probing” playing, the quartet will present two concerts spanning more than two centuries of music. At the Mary Seaton Room they will play Mozart’s Quartet in F major, K.590, Szymanowski’s Quartet No.1 in C major, Op.37, and Schubert’s Quartet in D minor, K.810, one of his most famous quartets, known as “Death and the Maiden.”

Program

MOZART  Quartet in F major, K.590
SZYMANOWSKI  Quartet No.1 in C major, Op.37
INTERMISSION
SCHUBERT  Quartet in D minor, K.810

About the Belcea Quartet

Corina Belcea, violin
Axel Schacher, violin
Krzysztof Chorzelski, viola
Antoine Lederlin, cello

What the Belcea Quartet writes in the preface to its recording of the complete Beethoven String Quartets could also be described as their artistic creed. These musicians are not confined by traditional boundaries. It is perhaps the very fact of their diverse cultural backgrounds that is behind their dynamic and free interpretative style. Founded at the Royal College of Music in London in 1994, the quartet is based in Great Britain. However, the Romanian violinist Corina Belcea and the Polish violist Krzysztof Chorzelski, the two founder members, bring a very different artistic provenance to the ensemble while drawing from the best traditions of string quartet playing received from the quartet’s mentors: the members of the Alban Berg and Amadeus Quartets. This spectrum is extended by the French musicians Axel Schacher (violin) and Antoine Lederlin (violoncello). The Belcea Quartet blends its diverse influences into a common musical language. ​