SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2024 · 7:30 PM
AROD QUARTET
THE BAKER-BAUM CONCERT HALL
Prelude Lecture · 6:30 PM
HAYDN
String Quartet, Op. 76, No.5
BEETHOVEN
String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor, Op. 131
DEBUSSY
String Quartet in G Minor, Op. 10
The Arod Quartet returns to La Jolla after their sensational Discovery Series debut in 2022. Based in Paris, the quartet first came to international attention when they won first prize at the 2015 Carl Nielsen International Chamber Music Competition and the 2016 ARD International Music Competition. Praised by Gramophone for its “expressive flexibility and delicacy of detail and keen ear for balance and harmonic flux” and hailed by Le Monde as a “luxury instrument that many composers dream to seize.”
“Ebullient and incisive…” – The New York Times
The Arod Quartet have firmly established themselves in performance and on recording at the forefront of the younger generation of string quartets by dazzling audiences around the globe. An exclusive recording artist for Erato Warner Classics, the Arod has released a trio of highly acclaimed, imaginatively programmed, and immaculately recorded albums since their debut Mendelssohn disc in 2017. Their sophomore release, The Mathilde Album, featured works by three key figures in Vienna’s musical life in the early 20th century—Schoenberg, Zemlinksy, and Webern—and honored Mathilde Zemlinksy (the composer’s sister), who became Schoenberg’s wife and was the dedicatee of his second quartet.
Most recently, the Arod released a Schubert album featuring Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” together with two other works. Recent and upcoming performances include ones in their hometown at the Philharmonie de Paris, New York’s Carnegie Hall, London’s Wigmore Hall and Barbican Centre, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, the Konzerthaus in Vienna, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Oji Hall of Tokyo, and the Berlin Philharmonia.
In recent years the Arod has worked very closely with the Ébène Quartet and the Diotima Quartet, and has collaborated with Alexandre Tharaud, Martin Fröst, and Amihai Grosz, the founding member of the Jerusalem Quartet and now the principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic. The group takes its name from Legolas’ horse in J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic Lord of the Rings trilogy; in Tolkien’s mythic Rohirric language, Arod means “swift.”
Jordan Victoria and Alexandre Vu are loan recipients of composite Stradivari and Guadagnini violins through the Beare’s International Violin Society.