The New Esterhazy Quartet: Early Haydn and Late Beethoven Quartets November 29, 2012

Barefoot Chamber Concerts continues its mission to help you start the weekend right. The series ("an enterprise noted for both its quality and informality" - San Francisco Classical Voice) presents really good music in the right acoustic and without the formality of most classical music events. Our Thursday concerts start at 6:30 and last no more than 75 minutes. Kids are very welcome if quiet, and admission under 18 is free.

This is a "Pizza Preview" event at the lovely Hillside Church, the same concert will be played at St. Mark's Parish Hall in Berkeley on the following Friday, but without pizza. Pizza will be for sale and will emerge hot from the ovens at 6:20. The music will start at 6:30, eat, drink and listen, what more do you want?

The series is delighted to present The New Esterhazy Quartet playing a late Beethoven quartet (Bb Opus 130) and an early Haydn quartet (G major Opus 17 # 5), as part of their sequence of concerts entitled Haydn & His Students.

The Beethoven quartet is epic and, mostly, festive. Instead of the usual four movements we have six. The first four are a riot of variable fun but followed by a Cavatina, a movement that Beethoven declared "was composed in the very tears of misery . . ." Then, finally, a contradance with lyrical interludes, a dreamlike ending to a whirlwind of a piece. Haydn himself is represented in our program by his theatrical Op. 17, No. 5 in G. This much loved quartet is, like the Beethoven, theatrical and full of dramatic turns. The two quartets are perfectly matched pieces from radically different eras, and the echos from one to the other only seem to underline their difference of spirit.

For more details, and to order tickets online, visit
www.barefootchamberconcerts.com

Official Website: http://barefootchamberconcerts.com