Ebene Quartet Plays The Jorgensen 4/6

The Ebène Quartet, young, confident and technically magnificent string players from Paris, are on a par with the hip Kronos and Turtle Island quartets, as comfortable with jazz and rock as with classical. But unlike their string brethren, Ebène embraces the core repertoire. They will perform a program of Mozart, Debussy and Mendelssohn at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 6, at Jorgensen.

Former Hartford Symphony Orchestra music director Michael Lankester will offer insights to the music and composers at a pre-concert talk at 6:45 p.m.

These musicians - Pierre Colombet and Gabriel LeMagadure, violin, Mathieu Herzog, viola, and Raphaël Merlin, cello - were the darlings of critics on their first U.S. tour just two years ago and won both "Recording of the Year" at the 2009 Classic FM Gramophone Awards and BBC Music Magazine's "Newcomer of the Year." In the summer of 2010 the Quartet made its Tanglewood and Mostly Mozart debuts.

The Gramophone award celebrated their CD of Debussy, Ravel and Fauré string quartets, only the fourth time that a chamber ensemble has won this prestigious prize. This recording was named Gramophone's December 2008 Editor's Choice and received five-star ratings from both BBC Music Magazine and London's Sunday Times. The Ebène Quartet's live Haydn CD was released in February 2006 to worldwide acclaim. For Virgin Classics, Ebène released a Brahms CD in 2009 and a jazz and crossover CD - FICTION - in 2010.

At Jorgensen, the quartet will play Mozart's Quartet in C Major, known as "Dissonant," though it was only that to the 1780s ear. Even Haydn, to whom it was dedicated, had some shock before finally conceding, "Well, if Mozart wrote it, he must have meant it." NPR has said Ebène plays Debussy as if born to it, which they are. They will play the Quartet in G Minor, in which the composer struck out in a new direction of Impressionist style. The program will end with Mendelssohn's Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, a deeply felt work and his last composition for string quartet.

Ebène, pronounced ay-BEN and meaning "ebony" in French, not only refers to the intensely black wood used in the fingerboards of their instruments but also to the jazz clarinet and their fascination with the great African American musical tradition they so love.

This won't be your grandmother's string quartet experience. Ebène has been described as playing "with a sense of controlled danger." Leave the opera gloves at home.

Jorgensen Center for the Performing Arts is located at 2132 Hillside Road on the UConn campus in Storrs. Regular tickets are $28 and $30, with some discounts available. For tickets and information, call the Box Office at 860.486.4226, Monday through Friday, 11 a.m.-5 p.m., or order online at jorgensen.uconn.edu. Convenient free parking is available across the street in the North Garage.

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