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San Francisco’s Alexander String Quartet will once again bring its internationally-renowned talents to campus this week for a series of concerts and educational workshops.
This will now be the quartet’s second return engagement at the Williams Center, having performed in March 2003 with the Newman-Oltman Guitar Duo in a performance of Laments and Dances from the Irish, and in March of 2005 to perform Beethoven and Shostakovich.
This year the performers are returning for several activities, says Ellis Finger director of the Williams Center, including a free concert at the Williams Center April 21 at 12 p.m., where they will be performing Leos Janacek’s String Quartet No. 2, known as “Intimate Letters.”
They will be holding coaching workshops for the Lafayette string orchestra at 4:15 p.m. April 20 on the Williams Center stage. Also on Thursday, they will be holding two community outreach concerts, one at Moravian Academy at 10:15 a.m. and another at Kirkland Village at 8 p.m. Their final area performance will be an invitation-only concert at the Chateau Chavaniac Friday night for the Friends of the Williams Center.
The quartet, comprised of Zakarias Grafilo and Frederick Lifsitz, violin; Paul Yarbrough, viola; and Sandy Wilson, cello, was formed in New York City in 1981. They have appeared at the Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum in New York City; Jordan Hall in Boston; the Library of Congress and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.; and at major venues in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, France, and Greece.
In 1985, the quartet captured international attention as the first and only American quartet to win the London International String Quartet Competition, receiving both the jury’s highest award and the Audience Prize. In May 1995, Allegheny College awarded Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees to the members of the quartet in recognition of their unique contribution to the arts.
BMG Classics released the quartet’s nine-CD set of the Beethoven cycle on its Arte Nova label in 1999 to tremendous critical acclaim. The quartet has also recorded works of Mozart, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and others on the Foghorn Classics label.
The nationally recognized Performance Series at Lafayette attracts more than 10,000 people each season. It has been cited for performing excellence by the National Endowment for the Arts, National Dance Project, Chamber Music America, Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Fund, Pennsylvania Arts and Humanities Councils, and Association of Performing Arts Presenters.