Calidore String Quartet Completes Beethoven Project with EARLY QUARTETS

On January 24, 2025, Signum Classics will release BEETHOVEN: The Early Quartets, the final installment in the Calidore String Quartet's award-winning full Beethoven cycle. The Early Quartets follows the Calidore's September 2024 recording of The Middle Quartets, named Recording of the Month by Gramophone and the February 2023 BBC Music Magazine Chamber Award-winning release of The Late Quartets.

Since the Calidore String Quartet's founding while students at the Colburn School in Los Angeles, the ensemble of Jeffrey Myers (violin), Ryan Meehan (violin), Jeremy Berry (viola), and Estelle Choi (cello) has been captivated by Beethoven's music, as “He was an artist who aimed to compose not for one portion of society, but rather to unite through our fundamental elements.” Now, the Calidore say, “The contents of this recording project serve as a snapshot of our fourteen years of working, growing, listening and collaborating with one another. Our interpretation speaks to the influences of our teachers and the great traditions associated with this repertoire, but also to that of our own generation, contemporary research, style and experience.”

The Quartet acknowledges that it is unusual to present Beethoven's Quartets in reverse order, leading with the Late Quartets and concluding with his earliest set of six. “Though the op. 18's are often most quartet players' first foray into Beethoven's music, they are by no means the easiest. Their transparency, elegance and robust shifts of character demand the most exacting levels of execution, poise and feeling,” say the Calidore. “In the op. 18, no. 6, performers face the daringly intricate rhythmic interplay of the scherzo and in the very next movement, must grapple with the tectonic emotional shifts of the last movement's revolutionary ‘La Melanconia.' Other thrilling conclusions, such as the finales of op. 18 no.1 and no. 4 make technical demands equal to anything in his later work… Beethoven demonstrates the full powers of his imagination and depth of his feeling throughout these six works.”

This fall, the Calidore began their season-long engagement with Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) performing the full catalogue of Beethoven's String Quartets. They also perform the full cycle at the University of Delaware where they serve as Distinguished String Quartet in Residence. The Quartet will also bring the complete Beethoven Quartets to Brooklyn and Queens as part of the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Initiative for Music and Community Engagement – a newly launched series dedicated to bringing chamber music into the five boroughs of New York City.

The Calidore String Quartet is recognized as one of the world's foremost interpreters of a vast chamber music repertory, from the cycles of quartets by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to works of celebrated contemporary voices like György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Caroline Shaw. For more than a decade, the Calidore has enjoyed performances and residencies in the world's major venues and festivals, released multiple critically acclaimed recordings, and won numerous awards. The Los Angeles Times described the musicians as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,” approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching.” The New York Times noted the Quartet's “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct,” and the Washington Post wrote that “four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one”.

The New York City based Calidore String Quartet has appeared in venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, London's Wigmore Hall, Berlin's Konzerthaus, Amsterdam's Concertgebouw, Brussels' BOZAR, and at major festivals such as the BBC Proms, Verbier, Ravinia and Music@Menlo. The Quartet has given world premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Anna Clyne, Gabriela Montero, Sebastian Currier, Han Lash, Mark-Anthony Turnage and Huw Watkins and collaborated with artists such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Anthony McGill, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Marc-André Hamelin, Joshua Bell, Emerson String Quartet, Gabriela Montero, David Finckel and Wu Han. 

Throughout the 24/25 season, the Calidore will perform the complete String Quartets of Beethoven at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the University of Delaware. The quartet also returns to their alma mater, the Colburn School in Los Angeles, to play the complete cycle of Korngold String Quartets. Other highlights of the 24/25 season include return appearances with San Francisco Performances, the Celebrity Series of Boston, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Spivey Hall in Atlanta, the Warsaw Philharmonic and London's Wigmore Hall; and premieres and performances of works by Han Lash, Sebastian Currier and Gabriela Montero.

Previous releases by the Calidore on Signum include Babel with music by Schumann, Shaw and Shostakovich, and Resilience with works by Prokofiev, Janáček, Golijov and Mendelssohn.

Founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010, the Calidore String Quartet has won top prizes at major US chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs. The quartet won the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition as well as the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship.  The Calidore has been a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and recipients of the Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award.

The Calidore String Quartet serves as the University of Delaware's Distinguished String Quartet in Residence. They have also served as artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto, University of Michigan and Stony Brook University. The Calidore is grateful to have been mentored by the Emerson Quartet, Quatuor Ébène, Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, David Finckel, Günter Pichler, Guillaume Sutre, Paul Coletti, and Ronald Leonard.

To post a comment, you must register and login.