Borromeo Quartet: Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich & Haydn

This season the  world-renowned Borromeo Quartet traverses works by two great Russians. Once again they bring the fruit of their labor, and their genius for making the greatest quartet repertoire vivid and meaningful, to our New Hampshire audience and the EEC stage.  The Program:

Haydn Quartet Op. 77 #2
Shostakovich Quartet No. 12
Tchaikovsky Quartet No. 1

The visionary performances of the Borromeo String Quartet have established it as one of the most important string quartets of our time. The Chicago Tribune calls the Borromeo “a remarkably accomplished string quartet, not simply for its high technical polish and refined tone, but more importantly for the searching musical insights it brings.” The San Diego Reader calls their performances “a musical experience of luminous beauty,” and the Boston Globe says “Each of the greatest string quartets has redefined what the possibilities of the medium are: through the perfection of its ensemble and intonation, through its poise and its passion, the Borromeos are recreating the medium anew and we are lucky to be here to hear it.”

Audiences and critics alike champion the Borromeo’s ability to bring back the contemporary fire to often-heard repertoire, while making even the most challenging new music approachable. “To hear and see them perform has always felt to me like taking a private tour through a composer’s mind,” says Cathy Fuller, Classical New England host on WGBH, Boston’s famed NPR station. “They probe and analyze from every angle until they discover how to best unveil the psychological, physical, and spiritual states that a great piece of music evokes. They’re champions of new music…but they also thrive on making the old classics sound vital and fresh.”

The Borromeo is redefining the classical music landscape through the pioneering the use of computers that enable each musician to perform entirely from full four-part scores instead of individual parts, a revealing and transformative experience which has never before been possible. The group often features onstage projections of handwritten manuscripts by composers like Beethoven, Schubert, and Bartok to vividly illustrate the creative process hard at work, a practice that has excited audiences of all ages.

The Borromeo has been the quartet-in-residence at the New England Conservatory of Music for more than twenty years and collaborates extensively with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. Its long-standing residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum has been called “one of the defining experiences of civilization in Boston” [Boston Globe].