Resilience Calidore String Quartet

• Sergei Prokofiev (1891 - 1953): String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, Op. 92:
• 1 I. Allegro sostenuto 06:16
• 2 II. Adagio 07:19
• 3 III. Allegro 08:16
• Leoš Janáček (1854 - 1928): String Quartet No. 1, JW VII/8 "Kreutzer Sonata":
• 4 I. Adagio - Con moto 04:10
• 5 II. Con moto 04:21
• 6 III. Con moto - Vivo - Andante 04:03
• 7 IV. Con moto (Adagio) - Più mosso 05:16
• Osvaldo Golijov (1960 - ):
• 8 Tenebrae (version for string quartet) 14:31
• Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809 - 1847): String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor, Op. 80, MWV R37:
• 9 I. Allegro vivace assai 07:43
• 10 II. Allegro assai 05:06
• 11 III. Adagio 08:04
• 12 IV. Finale: Allegro molto 05:41
• Total Runtime 01:20:46

Info for Resilience

In a world of dissonance and conflict combined with omnipresent media reporting, the unrelenting noise of social and political discord seems to be ever increasing. But the power of creativity inherent in music can provide balm and respite. This is the strong belief of the young players of the celebrated Calidore String Quartet and is their motivation for selecting this compelling repertoire for Resilience, their debut CD on Signum Records to be released worldwide on October 12.

The Calidore String Quartet is a recent Avery Fisher Career Grant and Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award recipient, and Grand-Prize winner of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition. The multi-award-winning ensemble is based in New York and already recognized as one of America’s foremost quartets with a steadily growing reputation in Europe and the UK where it is currently part of the BBC New Generation Artists scheme and a recent winner of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. The players wanted to find their own musical standpoint in the current environment of unrest and division, so they identified four masterworks from great composers who, whether in the midst of personal emotional turmoil or external conflict, seemed to find a cathartic path towards optimism through music.

In Mendelssohn’s String Quartet op. 80, composed in the wake of his beloved sister’s untimely death in 1847, the turbulence of grief and anger gives way to a sense of nostalgia and tenderness in the third movement to bring some sense of consolation. Janáček poured out his tumultuous feelings of unrequited love in his first string quartet based on Tolstoy’s novella ‘The Kreutzer Sonata’, a narrative that reflected his own frustration at being trapped in a loveless marriage while hopelessly in love with a younger woman.

Argentine composer Golijov was inspired by two contrasting experiences - one of violence in the Middle East and another of tranquillity in a planetarium - for his quartet Tenebrae, a study of conflict between the big-picture serenity of earth viewed from space and the close-up reality of pain and discord that troubles so much of the world. Decades before during the German army’s destruction of his Soviet homeland in 1941, Prokofiev was evacuated to the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, where he found a degree of emotional respite by immersing himself in the Kabardino folk rhythms and melodies to create a new palette of textures and sounds for his second String Quartet.

Calidore String Quartet

Calidore Quartet
Jeffrey Myers, violin Jeremy Berry, viola Ryan Meehan, violin Estelle Choi, cello The Calidore String Quartet is recognized as one of the world’s foremost interpreters of a vast chamber music repertory, from the cycles of quartets by Beethoven and Mendelssohn to works of celebrated contemporary voices like György Kurtág, Jörg Widmann, and Caroline Shaw. For more than a decade, the Calidore has enjoyed performances and residencies in the world’s major venues and festivals, released multiple critically acclaimed recordings, and won numerous awards. The Los Angeles Times described the musicians as “astonishing,” their playing “shockingly deep,” approaching “the kind of sublimity other quartets spend a lifetime searching.” The New York Times noted the Quartet’s “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct,” and the Washington Post wrote that “four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one”.

The New York City based Calidore String Quartet has appeared in venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia including Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, London’s Wigmore Hall, Berlin’s Konzerthaus, Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, Brussels’ BOZAR, and at major festivals such as the BBC Proms, Verbier, Ravinia, Music@Menlo, Rheingau, and Festspiele Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Always seeking new commissioning opportunities, the Quartet has given world premieres of works by Caroline Shaw, Anna Clyne, Huw Watkins and Mark-Anthony Turnage and collaborated with artists such as Anne-Sophie Mutter, Anthony McGill, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Marc-André Hamelin, Joshua Bell, Emerson String Quartet, Lawrence Power, David Finckel and Wu Han.

This season, the Calidore returns to the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the University of Delaware to perform the complete String Quartets of Beethoven; and to the Colburn School to play the complete cycle of Korngold String Quartets. Other highlights of the 24/25 season include appearances with San Francisco Performances, the Celebrity Series of Boston, the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, the Warsaw Philharmonic and BBC Radio at London’s Wigmore Hall; and premieres and performances of works by Han Lash, Sebastian Currier, Xavier Foley, and Gabriela Montero. In their most ambitious recording project to date, the Calidore is set to release the final two volumes of Beethoven’s complete String Quartets for Signum Records in the 24/25 season. Volume I, containing the late quartets, was released in 2023 to great critical acclaim, earning the quartet BBC Music Magazine’s Chamber Award in 2024. The magazine’s five-star review noted that the Calidore’s performances “penetrate right to the heart of the music” and “can stand comparison with the best.” Their previous recordings on Signum include Babel with music by Schumann, Shaw and Shostakovich, and Resilience with works by Prokofiev, Janáček, Golijov and Mendelssohn.

The Calidore String Quartet was founded at the Colburn School in Los Angeles in 2010. Within two years, the quartet won grand prizes in virtually all the major US chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competitions, and it captured top prizes at the 2012 ARD International Music Competition in Munich and the International Chamber Music Competition Hamburg. The Quartet first made international headlines as the winner of the $100,000 Grand Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition and was the first and only North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship. The Calidore was also named a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist and in 2018, was awarded the Avery Fisher Career Grant, having won the Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award a year prior. The Calidore is currently in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center in New York.

The Calidore String Quartet serves as the University of Delaware’s Distinguished String Quartet in Residence. In this capacity they direct the UD School of Music’s Graduate String Quartet Fellowship and serve as artistic directors of the University of Delaware Chamber Music Series.

Prior to taking this position, they served as artist-in-residence at the University of Toronto, University of Michigan and Stony Brook University.

The Calidore is grateful to have been mentored by the Emerson Quartet, Quatuor Ébène, Andre Roy, Arnold Steinhardt, David Finckel, Günter Pichler, Guillaume Sutre, Paul Coletti, and Ronald Leonard.

The Calidore String Quartet plays the following instruments: Jeffrey Myers plays a violin by Francesco Rugeri c.1680, owned by a private benefactor on loan through the Leonhard Fellowship and plays a bow by Francois Tourte.

Ryan Meehan plays a violin by Vincenzo Panormo c.1775 and a bow by Joseph Henry. Jeremy Berry plays a viola by Giovanni Battista Ceruti c.1811, owned by a private benefactor and a 1903 Umberto Muschietti viola and plays a bow by Pierre Simon. Estelle Choi plays a cello by Charles Jacquot c.1830.

Booklet for Resilience