American String Quartet Live From Music Mountain on July 26

(Falls Village, CT) Live From Music Mountain presents the American String Quartet in an all-Beethoven program that celebrates the 250th birthday anniversary of the celebrated composer. The American String Quartet will discuss Beethoven’s controversial metronome markings, and will take questions from the public. The American String Quartet is among the first string quartets getting back to in-person performances, with an outdoor concert scheduled for July 31 at MoCA, in Westport, CT.  

The American String Quartet is internationally recognized as one of the world's finest quartets. Described by Die Zeit as “a quartet engraved in eternity,” the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. The Quartet celebrated its 45th anniversary in 2019, and, in its years of touring, has performed in all fifty states and has appeared in the most important concert halls worldwide. The group’s presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartók, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire.

Live From Music Mountain starts at 3 pm ET on Sunday, July 26, 2020, at musicmountain.org, on YouTube and on Facebook Live. Questions can be submitted in advance via email to info@musicmountain.org.  

American String Quartet. Photo by Peter Schaaf

About American String Quartet

Internationally recognized as one of the world's finest quartets, the American String Quartet has spent decades honing the luxurious sound for which it is famous. The Quartet will celebrate its 45th anniversary in 2019, and, in its years of touring, has performed in all fifty states and has appeared in the most important concert halls worldwide. The group’s presentations of the complete quartets of Beethoven, Schubert, Schoenberg, Bartók, and Mozart have won widespread critical acclaim, and their MusicMasters Complete Mozart String Quartets, performed on a matched quartet set of instruments by Stradivarius, are widely considered to have set the standard for this repertoire. 

The Quartet’s 2018-19 season features additional performances of their major project together with the National Book Award-winning author Phil Klay and the poet Tom Sleigh, which offers a groundbreaking program combining music and readings that examines the effects of war on people, their hearts, and their minds. The Quartet will also collaborate again with the renowned author Salman Rushdie in a work for narrator and quartet by the film composer Paul Cantelon built around Rushdie’s novel The Enchantress of Florence. These tremendously imaginative projects cement the American String Quartet’s reputation as one of the most adventurous and fearless string quartets performing today, as comfortable with the groundbreaking as with the traditional.

The Quartet's diverse activities have also included numerous international radio and television broadcasts, including a recent recording for the BBC; tours of Asia; and performances with the New York City Ballet, the Montreal Symphony, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. Recent highlights include performances of an all-sextet program with Roberto and Andrès Díaz, many tours of South America, and performances of the complete Beethoven cycle of string quartets at the Cervantes Festival in Mexico and the Tel Aviv Museum in Israel. 

The American’s additional extensive discography can be heard on the Albany, CRI, MusicMasters, Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, and RCA labels. Most recently the group released "Schubert's Echo," which pairs Schubert's monumental last quartet with works bearing its influence by Second Viennese masters Alban Berg and Anton Webern. This repertoire posits that the creative line from the First to the Second Viennese Schools is continuous – and evident when these works are heard in the context of each other.  

As champions of new music, the American has given numerous premieres, including George Tsontakis’s 2015 Quartet No. 7.5, “Maverick,” Richard Danielpour's Quartet No. 4, and Curt Cacioppo's a distant voice calling. The premiere of Robert Sirota’s American Pilgrimage took place in September 2016, and will be performed around the U.S. in the cities the work celebrates. In January 2009 the Quartet premièred Tobias Picker’s String Quartet No. 2 in New York City in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Manhattan School of Music. 

Formed when its original members were students at The Juilliard School, the American String Quartet’s career began with the group winning both the Coleman Competition and the Naumburg Award in the same year. Resident quartet at the Aspen Music Festival since 1974 and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York since 1984, the American has also served as resident quartet at the Taos School of Music, the Peabody Conservatory, and the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

About Music Mountain

Music Mountain’s mission is the performance and teaching of the string quartet literature. While this mission remains vibrant in Music Mountain’s world-class Chamber Music Concert Series and Music Mountain Academy, it has expanded over the years with the addition of its popular Twilight Jazz Concert Series and new education and community programs.

Since 1930, generations of music lovers have come to Music Mountain for an exceptional concert experience and audiences continue to praise the outstanding quality and consistency of the events at Music Mountain, the exceptional acoustics of air-conditioned Gordon Hall, and the beauty and peaceful serenity of Music Mountain’s mountaintop grounds. While The New Yorker has described Music Mountain as “the summer shrine of the string quartet,” recent concertgoers see Music Mountain as “a peaceful green oasis” and highlight its “amazing venue, ambience, and experience.”

Music Mountain, a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, began as the unique vision of Jacques Gordon, Chicago Symphony concertmaster from 1921 to 1930 and the founding first violinist of the Gordon String Quartet, one of the leading quartets of its time. The buildings at Music Mountain form a well-designed campus in the Colonial Revival style. They were built by Sears, Roebuck & Company’s prefabricated housing division and are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today, artistic director Oskar Espina-Ruiz and Music Mountain’s dedicated board of directors steer Music Mountain through a period of continued growth, record-breaking attendance, campus improvements, and the expansion of its education and community programming.

Music Mountain is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, Connecticut State Department of Economic and Community Development Office of the Arts, the Peter N. Krysa Fund of Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, and two funds of the Northwest Connecticut Community Foundation, Inc., the Khurshed Bhumgara Fund and the Lucia Tuttle Fritz Fund.

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Music Mountain, 225 Music Mountain Road, Falls Village, CT 06031