ASPECT Chamber Music Series Presents Haunted Minds Feat. The Ariel Quartet

The ASPECT Chamber Music Series continues its fourth New York City season of illuminating performances with Haunted Minds on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 at 7:30pm at the Italian Academy of Columbia University. The concert features the Ariel Quartet in Bartók's String Quartet No. 1 and Shostakovich's String Quartet No. 8.

Musicologist Nicholas Chong gives an illustrated talk about how both Bartók and Shostakovich not only survived traumatic experiences, but transformed them into music of inspirational nature. Profoundly hurt when rejected by violinist Stefi Geyer, Bartók turned inwards, weaving music from a 'Stefi' motif that passes from grief to energetic folk-inspired resolution. Half a century later, guilt-ridden at having been pressured into joining the Communist Party, Shostakovich wrote his Eighth Quartet as a kind of epitaph for himself, filling it with quotations from his own works. Both quartets reveal much about how confrontation with darkness can ultimately lead back to the light.

ASPECT Chamber Music Series' fall season continues with Russian Elegy on Thursday, December 4, 2019 at 7:30pm at Bohemian National Hall featuring violinist Misha Keylin, cellist Zlatomir Fung and pianist Pavel Nersessian with an illustrated talk by Stephen Johnson.