Chamber Music Series: String Quartet

Lake County Symphony Orchestra Chamber Series 2020/21​: LCSO String Quartet 

The LCSO is excited to announce a unique musical offering beginning October 16, 2020. The first weekend of chamber music concerts will feature the principal strings of the Lake County Symphony Orchestra with Maestro Ron Arden sitting in on viola. To provide players with opportunities, keep live music in our audience’s life, and make possible the discussion of partnerships for great music making is our mission. It is our supreme passion to bring this new series to life.

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The first weekend will have two venues as follows…

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October 16 at 7 p.m. – Update: Friday venue changed to Gorton Center (Lake Forest)– Tickets $18 pre-paid/$20 at the door.

October 17 at 7 p.m. – Fred Astaire Ballroom in Long Grove – Tickets $18 pre-paid/$20 at the door

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*All events will follow strict health guidelines to ensure the safety of all performers and audience members.

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Program:

Beethoven Opus 18 No. 1

Brown Quartet No. 1  -  World Premiere

The LCSO Principal Strings:

Cynthia Arden and Lena Gaetz – violin

Ron Arden – viola

Barb Cannon - cello

Ludwig van Beethoven – 1770-1827

The impact, breadth, and passion of Beethoven’s music on the landscape of western music is more powerful and important than any composer in history. He is the great transistor, innovator, and pivot point around which all other composers revolve. His 57 years yielded and amazing outpouring of symphonic, vocal, chamber, and solo works unmatched by most and played more than any other composer who ever lived.

His string quartets bear out a rich and dynamic brush stroke of brilliance that discover the very best of the instruments while making musical statements of the most profound. Beginning with Opus 18, which we hear in this series, there is serious development of Beethoven’s contemporaries Haydn and Mozart. He takes their substantial musical forms and ideas to a new level of sophistication. After that and through to the last of his own quartets, Beethoven explores rhythms, harmonies, and melodies that are part of his great transitioning from early more transparent classicism to the beginning of brooding romance. Indeed, many musicians and listeners alike, if asked to hear the first and last quartets on one concert, would barely recognize them as both from Beethoven if not told in the program. The magnitude of his exploration is unparalleled under one pen and he is an intellectual phenomenon in every respect.

Ludwig van Beethoven's Op. 18, published in 1801 by T. Mollo et Comp in Vienna in two books of three quartets each, consisted of his first six string quartets. They were composed between 1798 and 1800 to fulfill a commission for Prince Joseph Franz Maximilian Lobkowitz, who was the employer of Beethoven's friend, the violinist Karl Amenda.