The Escher String Quartet’s August 9 program at Maverick Concert Hall is built around a work most ensembles leave alone: Zemlinsky’s String Quartet No. 4, Op. 25, composed in 1936, seldom performed, the kind of repertoire an ensemble takes on only when they know it deeply. The Escher has earned that knowledge — they recorded the complete Zemlinsky cycle for Naxos. Mozart’s String Quartet No. 16 in E-flat major, K. 428 opens, Dvořák’s No. 13 in G major, Op. 106 closes, and the afternoon traces from Classical lucidity through the Zemlinsky’s compressed urgency to Dvořák’s late warmth. It is a program that asks to be heard in order.
About the Show
The quartet (Adam Barnett-Hart and Bryan Lee, violins; Pierre Lapointe, viola; Brook Speltz, cello) has built a career on exactly this kind of sustained, thoughtful programming. Former BBC New Generation Artists and Avery Fisher Career Grant recipients, they are regular season artists at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and frequent performers at Wigmore Hall and Alice Tully Hall. BBC Music Magazine described their playing as “eloquent, full-blooded… a beautiful blend of individuality and accord,” which captures something essential about how chamber music at this level works: four musicians preserving distinct voices while making one sound. The ensemble’s March 2024 performance of all six Bartók string quartets in a single 3¼-hour concert at Alice Tully Hall, covered by Alex Ross in The New Yorker, placed them squarely in the conversation about which ensembles will carry the quartet tradition forward. The August 9 program asks for something different: range, from Mozart’s Classical assurance through Zemlinsky’s late-Romantic intensity to Dvořák’s expansive warmth.
Venue & Logistics
Maverick Concert Hall is exactly the kind of room this program deserves. Built by hand in 1916 by utopian writer and philosopher Hervey White — who put his stated purpose plainly: “I will build a hall for chamber music and guarantee a concert every Sunday afternoon” — the barn-like structure uses wide plank walls nailed directly to heavy timber framing, producing an acoustic warmth that suits chamber music more than most purpose-built halls manage. The Maverick Chamber Music Festival is the oldest ongoing summer chamber music festival in the United States. The hall seats 400. The concert begins at 4:00 p.m. at 120 Maverick Rd in Woodstock, in the Hudson Valley.
Tickets
Reserved hall seats are $55 or $35; partial-obstruction seats run $30 or $27. General admission outdoors is $20; students pay $10. Tickets are available through Tix.com. Buy tickets