Haydn Voyages

Four compositional giants meet on this concert program: Haydn, Beethoven, John Cage and Caroline Shaw. The dialogue among them is sometimes direct, and at other times less obvious, but Caroline Shaw sums it up best in her program note to her 2016 work, Blueprint:

Chamber music is ultimately about conversation without words. We talk to each other with our dynamics and articulations, and we try to give voice to the composers whose music has inspired us to gather in the same room and play music. Blueprint is also a conversation — with Beethoven, Haydn (his teacher and the “father” of the string quartet), and with the joys and malinconia of his Op.18, No. 6.

Joseph Haydn – Quartet no. 55 in D Major, op. 71, No. 2 (1793)

John Cage – Four (1989)

Caroline Shaw – Blueprint (2016)

Ludwig van Beethoven – Quartet no. 6 in B-flat Major, Op. 18, No. 6 (1800)