Pianist Peter Serkin to Join DaPonte String Quartet for 2018-19 Season Launch Gala at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine

Media Alert

For Immediate Release

Contact: Amy MacDonald (207) 781-5526

Pianist Peter Serkin to Join DaPonte String Quartet for 2018-19 Season Launch Gala at Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine.

The DaPonte String Quartet will kick off its 27^th season at its Spring FanFare concert at Studzinski Recital Hall at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine with a special guest artist, distinguished pianist Peter Serkin, on June 6. They will perform Robert Schumann’s Piano Quintet Op. 44 in E flat Major and Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quintet Op. 34 in F minor.

“Our 25^th Anniversary Gala at Studzinski Hall with pianist Awadagin Pratt was such a success, we wanted to do it again,” says Friends of DaPonte String Quartet Executive Director Amy MacDonald. “But we can only celebrate our 25^th anniversary so many times, so we decided to turn it into an annual fundraising event that will launch our new season. We are absolutely delighted that Mr. Serkin is able to join us for our first Spring FanFare season-kickoff concert.”

Serkin’s link to the DaPonte Quartet goes back decades, to when he first met and played with DSQ violinist Lydia Forbes. His own musical heritage extends over generations: his grandfather was violinist and composer Adolf Busch and his father pianist Rudolf Serkin. A dedicated chamber musician, Mr. Serkin has collaborated with Alexander Schneider, Pamela Frank, Yo-Yo Ma, the Budapest, Guarneri, Orion, Shanghai, and Dover String Quartets and TASHI, of which he was a founding member. He has also performed with the world's major symphony orchestras, led by such eminent conductors as Seiji Ozawa, Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, Eugene Ormandy, Claudio Abbado, Simon Rattle, and James Levine. He has a special feeling for both Brahms and Schumann, having recently made several arrangements of four-hand music by Schumann for various chamber ensembles as well as transcribing Brahms’s organ Chorale-Preludes for one piano, four-hands.

The DaPonte String Quartet is Maine’s premier string ensemble. Founded in 1991 in Philadelphia, it came to Maine over 20 years ago on a “temporary” National Endowment for the Arts/Chamber Music America rural residency grant; but once the grant ended, the ensemble had fallen in love with Maine and decided to stay. It now performs more than 40 times a year in Maine and across the country. 

The concert is June 6 at 6:30 pm at Bowdoin College’s Studzinski Recital Hall in Brunswick, Maine. Tickets are $65 and are available at www.DaPonte.org. For more information, call (207) 529-455.