Skip to main content

The Axelrod String Quartet: Stradivarius and Amati Saturday Series

Sales for this series have closed.
Registrations may still be available for the individual sessions within this series.

The Axelrod String Quartet: Stradivarius and Amati Saturday Series

3-Session Weekend In-Person Smithsonian Chamber Music Society Concert Series

3 sessions, from December 9, 2023, to April 27, 2024
Code: BPS6
Select your Registration
$80
Member
$100
Nonmember

The 3 programs included in this series are:

Smithsonian Chamber Music Society audiences are privy to the unparalleled experience of being able to hear two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicoló Amati—in this popular three-concert series on Saturdays. The concert features music composed by Florence Price, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Franz Schubert.

Smithsonian Chamber Music Society audiences are privy to the unparalleled experience of being able to hear two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicoló Amati—in this popular three-concert series on Saturdays. The concert features music composed by Joseph Haydn, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Franz Schubert.

Smithsonian Chamber Music Society audiences are privy to the unparalleled experience of being able to hear two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicoló Amati—in this popular three-concert series on Saturdays. The concert features music composed by Osvoldo Golijov, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Franz Schubert.

Smithsonian Chamber Music Society audiences are privy to the unparalleled experience of being able to hear two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicoló Amati—in this popular three-concert series on Saturdays.

The Axelrod Quartet—Marc Destrubé (violin), James Dunham (viola), Kenneth Slowik (violoncello), and now includes violinist Mark Fewer—presents three programs, each of which is anchored by one of Schubert’s last quartets.

Works of quartet masters Haydn, Beethoven, and Shostakovich are joined by three 20th-century works related, in their diversity, to varied interests of the National Museum of American History. Much of the music of African American composer Florence Price was rediscovered only in 2009. Her Quartet in G Major, a work from 1929, recalls the harmonic language of Antonín Dvorák, who prophesized, "In the Negro melodies of America I discover all that is needed for a great and noble school of music.” 

The music of the Argentinian Osvaldo Golijov, resident in the United States since 1986, has been characterized as “forcing us to look and listen in a way that we're not asked to do inside other music, speaking to the divisiveness and coming together of cultures.” The Austrian American Erich Wolfgang Korngold is probably most widely known for the nearly two dozen Hollywood film scores he wrote in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s (among them The Adventures of Robin Hood, for which he won the Academy Award in 1934), but many of his operas, orchestral and chamber works, songs, and piano pieces employ the same appealingly kaleidoscopic harmonic palette.

Special Note: Saturday concerts include a pre-concert lecture at 6:30 p.m. unless noted.

Concert Season Repertoire

Saturday, December 9, 2024, 3:30 p.m. (Rescheduled to Afternoon, Pre-concert lecture at 2:30 p.m.)

Florence Price: String Quartet in G Major  

Ludwig van Beethoven: Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 74, the Harp 

Franz Schubert: Quartet in A Minor, D804, Rosamunde 

Saturday, April 6, 2024, 7:30 p.m.

Joseph Haydn: Quartet in F Minor, Op. 20, No. 5   

Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Quartet No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 26 

Franz Schubert: Quartet in D Minor, D810, Death and the Maiden 

Saturday, April 27, 2024, 7:30 p.m.

Osvoldo Golijov: Tenebrae for String Quartet 

Dmitri Shostakovich: Quartet No. 7 

Franz Schubert: Quartet in G Major, D887 

3 concerts

General Information