Music from the Americas Concert Series presents The Arditti Quartet

MUSIC FROM THE AMERICAS CONCERT SERIES

MARCH 27th, 2019

6:00 PM Keller Hall

THE ARDITTI QUARTET

Elliott Carter, String Quartet No 5

Hilda Paredes, Hacia una bitácora capilar

Conlon Nancarrow, String Quartet No.3

José Luis Hurtado, Ten thousand suns

The Arditti Quartet has established itself as one of the world’s foremost chamber ensembles dedicated to contemporary music.

It enjoys a world-wide reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier 20th century music. Many hundreds of string quartets and other chamber works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by first violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974. Many of these works have left a permanent mark on 20th century repertoire and have given the Arditti Quartet a firm place in music history.

The quartet has recorded for more than 20 other CD labels and together this CD collection is the most extensive available of quartet literature in the last 40 years. To name just a few, Berio, Cage, Carter, Lachenmann, Ligeti, Nono, Rihm, the complete chamber music of Xenakis and Stockhausen’s infamous Helicopter Quartet.

Over the past 30 years, the ensemble has received many prizes for its work. They have won the Deutsche Schallplatten Preis several times and the Gramophone Award for the best recording of contemporary music in 1999 (Elliott Carter) and 2002 (Harrison Birtwistle). In 2004 they were awarded the ‘Coup de Coeur’ prize by the Academie Charles Cros in France for their exceptional contribution to the dissemination of contemporary music. The prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize was awarded to them in 1999 for ‘lifetime achievement’ in music. They remain to this day, the only ensemble ever to receive it.

The complete archive of the Arditti quartet is housed in the Sacher Foundation in Basle, Switzerland