General admission for children 17 years and under is always free

Canceled

Weekend Concert Series

Spektral String Quartet

Gardner Museum debut

Sunday, March 29, 2020
1:30 - 3 pm
Calderwood Hall

This Weekend Concert has been canceled. If you have any questions, please contact the Box Office at 617 278 5156.

Program

Anna Thorvaldsdóttir, Enigma (2019)
    Boston premiere
Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 16 in F Major, Op. 135 (1826)
Tomàs Luis de Victoria, O Magnum Mysterium (ante 1572)
Eliza Brown, String Quartet No. 1 (2012)

Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir is heralded for music in which the natural world collides with colossal, fantastical forces. She describes her music as “an ecosystem of sounds and materials.” Partly inspired by the solar eclipse of 2017, Enigma is intended to “provoke considerations of our relationship to the vast cosmos without—and the infinite universe within.” A similar cosmic dimension resonates in Beethoven’s final string quartet, which closes the concert. In the music of the last movement, Beethoven has written an apparently eschatological question in the score: “Muß es sein?” (Must it be?). He later responds to his own question: “Es muß sein!” (It must be!). 
 

The Museum thanks its generous concert donors: Fitzpatrick Family Concert; James Lawrence Memorial Concert; Alford P. Rudnick Memorial Concert; Marie Louise and David Scudder Concert; Wendy Shattuck Young Artist Concert; and Willona Sinclair Memorial Concert. The piano is dedicated as the Alex d’Arbeloff Steinway. The harpsichord was generously donated by Dr. Robert Barstow in memory of Marion Huse, and its care is endowed in memory of Dr. Barstow by The Barstow Fund. The Museum is also supported in part by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, which receives support from the State of Massachusetts and the National Endowment for the Arts.