School of Music Fellowship Ensemble: Varié Quartet featuring Illuminos Quartet

This exciting program features the debut of the Varié Quartet, the School of Music’s new Graduate Fellowship String Quartet, joined by their colleagues in the Illuminos Quartet performing masterpieces from the chamber music literature. In preparation, both groups participated in the String Quartet Intensive seminar this semester, where they collectively researched, studied and performed; honing their quartet skills in repertoire ranging from Haydn’s cheeky “Joke” quartet from his Op. 33 set (recognized as the invention of the genre as we know it), to the deeply romantic, 20th Century Expressionistic evocation Langsamer Satz of the young Anton Webern finding his place in the pantheon of composers during that turbulent time. The program festively concludes with Mozart’s final installment and the pinnacle of his art of string quartet writing, the virtuosic, forward-looking F Major Quartet, K. 590.