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Jeff Spurgeon: On this concert broadcast coming to you from Carnegie Hall Live. We're going to be hearing one of the most intimate of musical combinations, the string quartet. It was another great ensemble player who once said that a good quartet is like a good conversation among friends, interacting to each other's ideas. A person who said that was the jazz saxophonist, Stan Getz, but he knew what great classical musicians knew as well. On this concert, we're going to hear some great conversations of the Ébène Quartet. I'm Jeff Spurgeon. My conversation partner is John Schaefer.

John Schaefer: We have actually several dialogue partners tonight because we'll be hearing the Ébène Quartet playing music by Mozart, Shostakovich, and Robert Schumann. The Ébène Quartet is based in Paris. They've been together for more than 20 years, originally meeting while still in university. They started playing together by improvising jazz. Referencing Stan Getz was not a bad way to begin, Jeff. They also played contemporary music, rock, and pop.

In addition, of course, to their required standard classical fair. Some of the Ébène's mentors included the famous Isai and Takács quartets, the violinist Aber Heartfelt, and the composer Georgie Katak. For their 20th anniversary a couple of years ago, the quartet recorded all 16 of the Beethoven string quartets, a project they called Beethoven Around the World because in fact, they recorded the quartets on six different continents.

Jeff Spurgeon: It was really quite a journey that they made, and they didn't get to finish their project because they had planned to finish it in New York at Carnegie Hall. Then the pandemic came. They weren't able to. The recordings got done, but they didn't get to finish their tour. We'll talk a little bit more about that because, in fact, this concert is, in some ways, the program is, in some ways, a reaction to years of this quartet playing nothing but Beethoven as they were preparing for that project.

Tonight, the Ébène Quartet is at Carnegie Hall, and at the subterranean world of Carnegie, for we are backstage at Zankel Hall, that is the newest of Carnegie's three stages. In fact, this concert is a memorial for the benefactor of Zankel Hall, which used to be, if you've been in New York over the last few decades, it was a movie theater.

John Schaefer: There are bits of exposed Manhattan bedrock visible in the walls. It was one of the things that we all noticed when Zankel Hall opened back in 2003. You mentioned, Jeff, it is the most recent of the three venues here at Carnegie. I think people, when they hear us at Carnegie Hall, they expect the big stage.

Jeff Spurgeon: They see the big [crosstalk]

John Schaefer: The Isaac Stern Auditorium, the Perelman stage as it's officially known. That's where much of the history has been made here. There's also the smaller Weill Recital Hall, and this mid-sized hall, Zankel, which is perfect for the kinds of chamber music that we'll be hearing tonight.

Jeff Spurgeon: No Beethoven on this program, but the variety of works, one each, in fact, from the 18th and 19th, and 20th centuries.

John Schaefer: The quartet members are the violinists, Pierre Colombet and Gabriel Le Magadure. You can hear them tuning up behind us as we prepare for the concert. The violist is Marie Chilemme, and the cellist is Raphaël Merlin, who told us about how they designed this program.

Raphaël Merlin: Actually we were missing this dialogue between aesthetics and between composers. Tonight it's Mozart G Major 387. It's called the Spring Quartet because of its freshness and unbelievable fecundity. I don't know if I can say that.

Jeff Spurgeon: Yes. Fecundity, that's right.

Raphaël Merlin: Then to do the biggest contrast possible, we've chosen to play Shostakovich 8, which, it could be a winter quartet. It's a very like funeral, dedicated to the victims of war and all this. These two pieces, they don't have anything to do between each other, but to play them in a row makes a contrast which makes, at least in the intermission, we feel like we've done quite a journey already. Second half is a Schumann No. 2 tonight. Back to spring, but with this typical Schumann love description and romanticism energy. No thematic, but just proportion.

John Schaefer: That is the cellist, Raphaël Merlin, from the Ébène Quartet. As he mentioned, they're going to start the program with Mozart. It's actually one of the six so-called Haydn Quartets that Mozart wrote at the age of 26 when he arrived in Vienna and befriended the musical giant of the day, Franz Joseph Haydn. In fact, the two musical luminaries would sometimes perform together in Mozart's apartments.

Mozart wrote this set of six quartets, dedicated it to Haydn. After he heard some of the quartets, Haydn famously wrote to Mozart's father, Leopold, "Before God, and as an honest man, I tell you that your son is the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name. He has taste and what is more, the most profound knowledge of composition." Not bad.

Jeff Spurgeon: That's a pretty amazing statement. I imagine that Mozart immediately put it up on LinkedIn.

[laughter]

I just don't picture him having [crosstalk]

John Schaefer: Whatever the Baroque Austrian version of LinkedIn was.

Jeff Spurgeon: Exactly. Then the second work that we'll hear on this program is the Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 pretty much halfway through Shostakovich's 15 Quartet. That'll be the first half of the concert. Then we'll have an intermission. In the second half, we'll hear the middle of the three string quartets that Robert Schumann wrote. I want to point out again what our cellist told us about this program, which is that this is a program that is in some ways in reaction to years of work by this quartet for this big Beethoven project that they did over a course of several years.

It was actually spurred by someone at Carnegie Hall. They concluded a concert here, the Ébène Quartet. The artistic advisor at the time, Jeremy Geffen, came to them and said, "You guys ought to think about doing all the Beethoven." They did, and that's where this Six Continent Project came about. It was to have reached its pinnacle back here at Carnegie Hall in 2020 for the anniversary year. Of course, that concert, like so many other things around the world designed to celebrate Beethoven, did not take place. The quartet did manage to do all the recordings they wanted to do.

John Schaefer: They recorded at least two quartets on each of the six continents, which would have included a trip to Africa.

Jeff Spurgeon: They had marvelous times in Africa playing for children in extreme poverty, extreme difficulty of circumstance. What we heard from our cellist was that the places where they played this music where it was not known, they elicited such amazing reactions from, for instance, children. We might appreciate, oh, that's a clever transition that Beethoven made. The kids were stunned because they'd never heard it before and it was fresh to them. The communication of this music and we were told it happened in Sao Paulo where they performed as well. It is another testimony to the power of classical music all around the world, and that's what Raphaël Merlin told us.

John Schaefer: It's also a testimony to the power of live music. Bringing live music to people who are in circumstances where they're not normally exposed to. It can be one of the most powerful agents of change that you could possibly imagine.

Jeff Spurgeon: It's one of the best ways to bring people together, and that is something that we've all discovered as the pandemic has been relieved a little bit, is we weren't together, and just being in an audience to hear a concert has been a thrill.

John Schaefer: Here at Zankel Hall, the audience maxes out it just under 600, I think it's 599.

Jeff Spurgeon: Something like that.

John Schaefer: They're about to be joined, joined by the Ébène Quartet from Paris. As we mentioned, the opening work on the program is one of the six so-called Haydn Quartets by Mozart, the six pack of string quartets that Mozart dedicated to his friend and mentor. The specific one that we'll hear is the string quartet in G Major, Köchel listing 387, sometimes known as the Spring Quartet.

Jeff Spurgeon: Now live on stage at Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, the Ébène Quartet to bring you Mozart from Carnegie Hall Live.

MUSIC -  Mozart String Quartet in G Major, K. 387

[applause]

John Schaefer: That's music by Mozart, the string quartet in G Major, Köchel listing 387, one of the six quartets Mozart wrote and dedicated to his friend and mentor, Franz Joseph Haydn, who really was the founder of the form of the string quartet as we've come to know it. This music by Mozart played live by the Ébène Quartet from Paris, here in New York at Carnegie Hall on stage of Zankel, the medium-sized venue here at Carnegie. I'm John Schaefer alongside Jeff Spurgeon.

Jeff Spurgeon: This is listener-supported Classical New York, 105.9 FM at HD WQXR Newark, and 90.3 FM WQXW Ossining. The Ébène Quartet backed out on stage for a second curtain call, but good heavens, they've got a good stiff piece of work ahead of them next on this program.

John Schaefer: An interesting contrast to the Mozart, which is often referred to as the Spring Quartet.

Jeff Spurgeon: Some publisher gave it that name.

John Schaefer: Yes, but it has a very kind of pastoral slow movement, and then that frisky spritely finale. It's not an inappropriate nickname for the piece.

Jeff Spurgeon: It sounds springy. That's just fine.

John Schaefer: The Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8, despite being perhaps his best-known string quartet, is another thing altogether.

Jeff Spurgeon: Extremely dark. Shostakovich was in Dresden. He'd gone there just a few years after World War II in 1960, to work on a film score for a project about the firebombing of that city by the Allied Forces near the end of World War II. While he was there, he looked around at the damage and worked on the film score, but wrote this string quartet and wrote it in just a very short period, and dedicated it to the victims of fascism and war. He also told a close friend. He said, "When I die, it's hardly likely that someone will write a quartet dedicated to my memory." Shostakovich betrothed, "I decided to write it myself."

John Schaefer: We'll hear more about this piece during intermission, but the cellist of the quartet, Raphaël Merlin, told us that that dedication for this quartet is, unfortunately, still timely.

Raphaël Merlin: Of course, this program of tonight was decided way before the Ukraine war. It was two years ago. We feel, in a way, that this dedication to the victims of fascism and war, which is his words, but we all understand what he means with this. He's dedicating his music to any victim of any dictatorship or any war. I don't think Shostakovich needs us, but I think the world today needs Shostakovich.

Jeff Spurgeon: The cellist of the Ébène Quartet, Raphaël Merlin, speaking about this work. We will talk about the musicologist at intermission about where Shostakovich was inside his own head in his life when wrote this quartet. It's worth mentioning that Raphaël Merlin made a point to mention that this work appears tonight in a particular context because of what's going in three-quarters the way around the world.

John Schaefer: It's also worth noting that this is one of several works that Shostakovich used his own musical signature, his initials in music. D for Dmitri, and then S-C-H, which is the German way of spelling E-flat, C, and B.

Jeff Spurgeon: If you can find an S and an H on your piano keyboard, you are really something.

John Schaefer: Or you're German.

Jeff Spurgeon: Or you're German, right. Because in the notation, it works that way. It's something that Bach had used in his own signature.

John Schaefer: Exactly. Bach. B in German is B-flat. Bach is B-flat, A, C, B. It's not the most tuneful set of notes because you have a lot of minor seconds there, but he used it. John Cage used C, A, G, E. Shostakovich, not the only one to use a motto based on his own name.

Jeff Spurgeon: Schumann had his Abegg Variations for some young woman that he knew of early in his career. It's a motif that appears over and over. Yes, that D, E-flat, C, B is the Shostakovich signature that we'll hear. There are some other quotations too in this work that would have meant things-- That would've been understood by people who knew Shostakovich's music, and in a larger sense, the people of his time in Russia. There are some songs that are cued in this work as well. We'll talk more about that at intermission. For now, on the stage of Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York City, comes the Ébène Quartet to bring us a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8, written in 1960.

Raphaël Merlin: Good evening. Thank you very much for being here tonight. It's a special joy for us, especially considering that the COVID pandemic had provoked the cancellation of our six concerts for the Beethoven Cycle in 2020. Finally, we're here, and even if you are all wearing this mask, it feels good to be here again.

[applause]

As you might imagine, when it's about organizing tours for a string quartet in the US, as we are all based in Europe, in France, you can't do that just two months in advance. It's actually rather two years in advance. When this concert was planned, we choose to play the eight quartet of Shostakovich just for the reason we would like to play this music for the first time.

We never played any Shostakovich quartet before, and we were far to imagine that it would just meet so sadly the international actuality. We would like, as Shostakovich himself dedicated this piece to the victims of war, we would like to dedicate this concert to all the victims and all the refugees about this terrible war we would hopefully see to end very soon. Thank you very much.

[applause]

Jeff Spurgeon: The cellist of the Ebène Quartet, Raphaël Merlin. Now, the Shostakovich 8 from Carnegie Hall live.

MUSIC - Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8 [applause]

Jeff Spurgeon: Music of Dmitri Shostakovich, a performance of the String Quartet No. 8 by the Paris-based ensemble, Quatuor Ébène. Again, string quartet. They've been around for 20-ish or so years, changed violist a few years ago, and are back in New York for the first time. As you heard, mentions before the performance began by Raphaël Merlin, they intended to be here in 2022 to mark the Beethoven Bicentennial, but COVID stopped them as it stopped so many things. They weren't able to do that half dozen concerts, and they are very pleased to be back at Carnegie Hall for this performance tonight. Backstage at Zankel Hall, the performance venue for this evening. I'm Jeff Spurgeon, alongside John Schaefer.

John Schaefer: The members of the Ébène Quartet back out on stage here at Zankel. Again, the mid-sized venue here at Carnegie Hall. Very much suited to chamber music like we're hearing tonight. The Ébène Quartet, playing a study in contrast in the first half. The Mozart piece, a very sunny work, and the Shostakovich String Quartet No. 8, which you've just heard a much darker piece. Even the waltz early in the piece has a limping quality to it. It's not a gentile dance. It's an almost grotesque version of a waltz.

Jeff Spurgeon: Well, Shostakovich brought so much deep personal emotion into his quartet. I was thinking about this too, John, the other day, we've gone from Mozart with a Schumann ahead, but if Haydn started the string quartet, and then Mozart produced masterpieces, and then Beethoven showed up, and Schubert wrote a few pretty good works in that genre. Imagine what Schumann was thinking in the middle of the 19th century when he started to study the string quartet.

In the 20th century, Shostakovich produced so many works in this field, but on the shoulders, and no doubt, feeling the pressure of all of those quartets that had been written before.

John Schaefer: Along with Béla Bartók, you would have to say that Dimitri Shostakovich was one of the two great string quartet composers of the 20th century. With all due respect to Elliot Carter, who also wrote some fantastic string quartets. The 15-string quartets, Shostakovich wrote were some of his most personal music, and this most of all, and as we can get into in a moment, there are lots of, if you are a Shostakovich fan, there are lots of echoes. Wait a minute, did I just hear this, that, the other thing?

Jeff Spurgeon: The answer is yes.

John Schaefer: The answer is yes, you did hear those things. We're going to take the first part of this intermission to learn a little bit more about this remarkable quartet. Along with it, Shostakovich himself, Pauline Fairclough is a Professor of Music at the University of Bristol in England. She's written quite a bit about the life and work of Shostakovich. She's been studying his music for a long time and was first introduced to it while she was still at university.

Pauline Fairclough: One day, one of my lecturers played me the skirt of the Tenth Symphony. He's incredibly angry, visceral, violent music.

MUSIC- Shostakovich: Symphony No. 10.

Pauline Fairclough: He also composed this and played me the little orchestration that Shostakovich did of Vincent Newman's Tea for Two, Tahiti Trot.

MUSIC- Dmitri Shostakovich: Tahiti Trot (Tea for Two)

Pauline Fairclough: It just completely blew my mind. I thought, how can one person write these two different kinds of music? I was only 19 myself at the time. This struck me as a great and fascinating paradox. I subsequently came to learn it's not a fascinating paradox at all. It's eminently understandable. It's all part of what made Shostakovich such a rich composer, musician.

Jeff Spurgeon: Yes. From the lightness of that decoration of the tune that Shostakovich knew as Tahiti Trot when he made that famous arrangement, then we go to these deep and dark emotional works, such as the Eighth Quartet that we just heard. Shostakovich composed the Eighth quartet in three days, as we told you. He had been paying a visit to East Germany writing the score for a film about the allied bombing of Dresden at the end of World War II. Shostakovich in that time in 1960 when he made that visit to East Germany, he was under a lot of pressure from the cruise chief government to join the Communist Party.

He swore he would never do it, but he had a family and a position to protect. For those reasons, he exceeded to that demand. It struck him very deeply and really devastated him. He made the dedication of the Eighth Quartet to the victims of fascism and war. Yet, it was also that dedication about himself as Pauline Fairclough explained.

Pauline Fairclough: I think the Eighth Quartet was both things. I think it's his a requiem for himself. We can't say, "Oh, no, it's not," because he said that it was in a letter to a very close friend and said that he wept while he was writing it. It was completely about his own sense of desolation at that time for a number of reasons. I think that even at the moment of its composition, we can take it as really being about both things. I think we can often take Shostakovich more literally at his words instead of always trying to seek underneath like, "What did he really mean?"

I think he really meant this to be a commemorative work to victims of fascism and war. Why not? Also, he himself was a victim in a different kind of way.

John Schaefer: Now, we were mentioning before alluding to the various musical references echoes that you hear throughout the String Quartet No. 8, there are elements of his 10th symphony, his second piano trio. There's an Aria from his opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. He even quotes, and this goes back to the idea of the piece as a requiem, he quotes Wagner's Funeral March from Götterdämmerung, and Professor Fairclough says that there's another musical reference that might be a little more obscure to us in the modern-day, but would not have been to mid-20th century Russians.

Pauline Fairclough: The other one that I think is particularly important is the quotation from the 19th-century revolutionary song, tormented by Griever Oppression.

[music]

Shostakovich came from a family who were actually well-known for revolutionary activity in Siberia. His parents were both very politically engaged people. They had you could argue a way into the new regime. Both his parents marched in the street through Petrograd after the February revolution singing these 19th-century revolutionary songs on the way to the Field of Mars, where those who died in the street fighting in February 1917 were buried. It was a huge mass grave that they actually dug in this field near the Winter Palace. They sang these songs at home.

They meant something to the Shostakovich household. The ideals of the February revolution, they were so good they got the tot to abdicate. There was a chance they could have some democracy in Russia. So much hope was invested in this historical moment only to see it destroyed and betrayed the population of Russia even more terrorized under Lenin and later Stalin than they had been under [unintelligible 01:18:05]. I think there is a message of betrayal in this deep sadness, suffering, and oppression.

Yes, it was a 19th-century revolutionary song. There was this moment of hope in 1917. In 1960, he can quote this song and people will understand that the Russian people are still oppressed.

[music]

John Schaefer: The song was called Tormented by Grievous Oppression, one of the songs quoted by Shostakovich in his Eighth String Quartet. Thanks to Dr. Pauline Fairclough, Music Professor at the University of Bristol in the UK for some of her insights into the life and work of Dimitri Shostakovich. We're at intermission here at Zankel at Carnegie Hall. The second half of the program will feature the Ébène Quartet, playing a piece by Robert Schumann, one that he wrote for his wife, Clara. Jeff, you were mentioning before that the Ébène Quartet's been around for 20 years or so.

Back in 2010, the Quartet stopped by our studios in lower Manhattan and played a couple of pieces on my program soundcheck, which show another side of the Ébène Quartet. The Ébène is simply the French word for ebony and refers to their early experiments playing jazz. Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto, which he wrote for Woody Herman Duke Ellington's, Ebony Rhapsody, so that word suggests their jazz leanings. The piece they played in our studio was this surf rock classic from the '60s called Misirlou.

[music] Still sounds as good as the day they recorded it, live in our studios downtown back in 2010.

Jeff Spurgeon: Yes, it sounds great.

John Schaefer: The Ébènet Quartet playing Misirlou, which was one of the most unlikely hits of the 1960s. A piece of guitar-based surf rock by Dick Dale, who was of Armenian extraction. There's an exotic flavor to the melody, which comes right out of Armenian folk music. There it was on the top 40 here in the United States and now covered by this String Quartet, the Ébène Quartet.

Jeff Spurgeon: They have done a wide variety of music that is not traditional String Quartet music. They've made recordings of works by people such as Wayne Shorter and Harold Arlen and Lennon-McCartney. It's a really broad, interesting bass, and they work with all kinds of other musicians. They made a CD with Menahem Pressler. They did a total big album of songs based on poetry of Paul Valéry who was one of the great poets at the end of the 19th century with all of the French composers from that part of the cannon.

There's a lovely disc they did with an American standard singer named Stacey Kent. All kinds of collaborations by this group. It's important to them to do this, and they have a good reason to go for these other kinds of music as cellist Raphaël Merlin told us, it keeps their repertoire interesting.

Raphaël Merlin: Myself, I am a jazz pianist at first, and I was very much interested to look into String Quartet arrangements like to use the String Quartet as a tool for joining this academism of repertoire and making a bridge to what we all heard as teenagers. We've all been educated to music, not only because of Bach and Schumann but also because of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones or whatever. From the very start of our career, we wanted always to explore. Each of us has quite a specialty.

I would say, for instance, Pierre, he was a teenager when he frequently played the drums and the electric bass in rock bands. Also, part of his musicianship as a violinist. Gabriel is much more into electro and folk music, and Marie's an unbelievable singer. We actually want to make her sing more and more even on stage, even in the next crossover project. Each of us has his own parallel phase. I'm quite convinced that a good String Quartet should not be too much homogeneity.

Homogeneity is one of our first things to research to get as a quartet, even our students need it. What makes quality at the end is probably much more complementary and interdependence. How can you manage this? Of course, it's a human challenge also. Everything comes together.

John Schaefer: That is the cellist Raphaël Merlin from the Ébène Quartet. Let's go back to that live session they did for us back in 2010. They did a cover of the American standard song Nature Boy, which was made famous by Nat King Cole.

[music]

Just a little bit of Nature Boy boy from the Great American songbook. A live recording that the Ébène Quartet did on my program's soundcheck way back in 2010. Now, we're getting near the end of intermission here at Zankel Hall, and we're going to hear in the second half of the program, a single work, Robert Schumann's String Quartet in F Major part of his Opus 41, which is a set of three String Quartets. Now, Schumann wrote a fair amount of chamber music, the piano quartet, very famous; piano quintet, also famous. These three String Quartets were his only compositions in this format, and he wrote them as a birthday present for his wife Clara Schumann. The inspiration was, Jeff, as you mentioned earlier, Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven. Of the three quartets, this one, the Quartet No.2 is probably the least played. We asked cellist Raphaël Merlin about that.

Raphaël Merlin: Number two is probably the less played because it's the most difficult one, just simply for this reason. If you take first movement, it's extremely difficult to make it sound satisfying because it's a pianist-composer.

John Schaefer: Now, that's interesting-- Forgive me for you're interrupting, but people complain about the way Schumann orchestrated. Yes, it doesn't always fit the hands easily. [unintelligible 01:30:43] It seems like he makes things hard for everybody. He just doesn't care.

Raphaël Merlin: Absolutely. That's totally true. The question of length of any note, any value, rhythmical value is still some a screen between the listener and the player. It needs to be organized to reach the transparency of what the pianist can- with the percussive element of piano. That's a very interesting work to do. Anytime we do complain, we look at the score. We thought, "Okay, the idea of Schumann, we quite feel it, we quite understand it. Would we have written it differently at his place? Of course, not."

Jeff Spurgeon: [laughs] Schumann can seem wrong, but it's right because it's Schumann. That is cellist Raphaël Merlin of the Ébène String Quartet. We are getting ready for him, and his three colleagues to bring us the middle quartet of Robert Schumann's three quartets in our Carnegie Hall live broadcast tonight coming to you from Carnegie's Zankel Hall. This is listener-supported classical New York, 105.9 FM at HD WQXR Newark, and 90.3 FM WQXW Ossining.

The lights are down in Zankel Hall. The audience is ready, but the musicians are backstage just a few feet from John and me tuning up and getting ready to dig their hands into one of these three quartets that Schumann wrote. After making a definitive study, he wanted to turn to the quartet art. He read through Hayden's quartets, and he read through Mozart's quartets and was ready to go. Now, this was the summer after his great year of song when he wrote all those wonderful leader compositions.

In the next year, he turned to chamber music. He wrote these three quartets and some other works in that year. He did it very deliberately with a particular kind of attention. He really wanted to write a great string quartet. He came up with these three. This is, as you heard Raphaël say, perhaps the least familiar of the three. Even later on in his life, Schumann said that he really loved these quartets, and thought they were some of the very best of what he was producing in his life up to that point.

[applause]

John Schaefer: Applause for the members of the Ébène Quartet as they walk back out on stage here at Carnegie's Zankel Hall. As I mentioned before, this is a single work that will take up the second half of the program. Robert Schumann's String Quartet in F Major Opus 41, number two from Carnegie Hall Live.

MUSIC - R. SCHUMANN String Quartet in F Major, Op. 41, No. 2

[applause]

Jeff Spurgeon: Enthusiastic applause in Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall for the Ébène String Quartet in their performance of Robert Schumann's String Quartet No.2, the second of the three quartets that he wrote, collective in his Opus 41. Members of this Carnegie Hall audience on their feet for this performance by the Ébène Quartet at the conclusion of their scheduled program tonight. A concert which has also brought you music by Mozart and by Shostakovich. Backstage at Zankel Hall, I'm Jeff Spurgeon alongside John Schaefer.

John Schaefer: We mentioned before the piece that it's not one of Schumann's most frequently heard pieces of chamber music, but the quartet made a good case for it.

Jeff Spurgeon: Oh, absolutely.

John Schaefer: It certainly has an energetic finale that almost lifts you out of your seat to that standing ovation position. [chuckles] The members of the Quartet back out on stage to applause and Bravos from the audience here at Zankel Hall. The members of the Ébène Quartet are violinists Pierre Colombet and Gabriel Le Magadure. The violist is Marie Chilemme and the cellist, whom we've heard from a couple of times this evening is Raphaël Merlin.

Jeff Spurgeon: This particular concert program that the Ébène's touring with is, as Raphaël Merlin told us at the beginning of the program, a bit of a rest and relief from several years of working on all of the Beethoven String Quartets and traveling literally around the world to perform them. They were supposed to wrap up that tour in 2020 here at Carnegie Hall, but the pandemic stopped that.

For the first time now since that time, Ébène's back in New York with a program of traditional proportions and aesthetics and conversations among composers and styles as Raphaël Merlin told us. That's what we got. Music from the 18th and 19th and 20th centuries on this program from Mozart and Schumann and Shostakovich. More cheers and applause for the Ébène Quartet. Now they are back on stage once again sitting down. It seems quite likely that we're going to get an encore.

Host: That's a little, little, little thing.

[laughter]

Host: Schumann, string quartet arrangement from the first of the Bunte Blätter album for piano.

MUSIC - R. SCHUMANN Bunte Blätter

[applause]

Jeff Spurgeon: An encore by the Ébène Quartet. A transcription of one of the Bunte Blätter, the Colored Leaves of Robert Schumann. A late collection of piano works transcription here made by cellist Raphaël Merlin for the Ébène Quartet as we conclude this Carnegie Hall broadcast of string quartet music tonight by Mozart, and Shostakovich, and Schumann.

John Schaefer: Our thanks to Clive Gillinson and the staff of Carnegie Hall. WQXR's team includes engineers Edward Haber, George Wellington, Bill Sigmund, and Duke Marcos.

Jeff Spurgeon: Our production team is Eileen Delahunty, Lauren Purcell-Joiner, and Max Fine. I'm Jeff Spurgeon.

John Schaefer: I'm John Schaefer.

Jeff Spurgeon: Carnegie Hall Live is a co-production of WQXR and Carnegie Hall.

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