Dudok Quartet Amsterdam to Make New York Debut at Park Avenue Armory

Thu, Sep 19 - Sat, Sep 21  2019

_S_eptember 19 and 21, the Dudok Quartet Amsterdam, will make their New York debut in the recital series at the Park Avenue Armory. The quartet, which consists of Judith Van Driel (violin), Marleen Wester (violin), Marie-Louise de Jong (viola), and David Faber (cello), has been said to be one of most wide-ranging string quartets of our time, with heartfelt performances that spotlight the essence of their music – of both contemporary works and classics that feel revelatory and new. The ensemble makes their New York debut with programs focusing on compositions by Haydn and Ligeti that artfully showcase their versatility and superb musicianship. They open their residency with an evening of works that employ contrapuntal techniques in a variety of forms, intertwined with ancient short pieces ranging from the 11th century to J.S. Bach. The dramatic qualities in the works of Haydn and Ligeti are amplified in the second program, enlightened by Mendelssohn’s final string quartet, written as a deeply personal requiem for his suddenly deceased younger sister

Schedule

Thursday, September 19 at 7:30pm
Haydn and Ligeti: The Polyphonists
Haydn String Quartet Op.20, No.2 in C Major
Ligeti: String Quartet No.2
Beethoven: Grosse Fuge, Op.133
Tickets

Saturday, September 21 at 8:00pm
Haydn and Ligeti: The Romantics
Haydn: String Quartet, Op.20, No.5 in F Minor
Ligeti: String Quartet No.1
Mendelssohn: String Quartet No.1
Mendelssohn: String Quartet No.6 in F Minor, Op.80
Tickets

Dudok Quartet
Photo: Marco Borggreve

About the Dudok Quartet

The Dudok Quartet Amsterdam is forging a reputation as one of the most creative and versatile young quartets of its generation. With its mission of “sharing the heart of music”, the Dudok Quartet is committed to crafting unique and eclectic programmes in order to engage with its audiences in new and imaginative ways.

In repertoire ranging from Ligeti, Shostakovich and Weinberg through to Mendelssohn, Mozart and Beethoven the Quartet constantly strives to forge and explore new pathways and connections in music. Their intelligent approach and flair for programming also sees them regularly perform their own arrangements of pieces and they have so far produced arrangements of composers including Gesualdo, des Prez and Brahms. Collaboration is also a key part of the Quartet’s ethos and recent partners have included Pieter Wispelwey, Daria van den Bercken, Dmitri Ferschtmann, Erik Bosgraaf and Annelien Van Wauwe.

The Dudok Quartet has performed at many of the major European venues and festivals including the Vienna Konzerthaus, Beethoven Haus Bonn, De Doelen, Carinthischer Sommer Festival, Gergiev Festival, West Cork Chamber Music Festival, Festival Jeunes Talents, Festival Quatuors à Bordeaux and the Amsterdam String Quartet Biennale, as well as appearing regularly at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Amsterdam Muziekgebouw. The Quartet made its US debut in January 2018 at the Northwestern University Winter Chamber Music Festival, with future US plans including its New York debut at the Park Avenue Armory. Highlights of the 2018/19 season include engagements in Milan, Mantova, Utrecht and Rotterdam, as well as returns to the Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam and performances at the Heidelberg String Quartet Festival.

Dudok Quartet Photo: Marco Borggreve

In 2015 the Dudok Quartet released its first recording on the Resonus Classics label. “Métamorphoses” explores the theme of musical innovation through works by Ligeti, Haydn and Brahms and was awarded Editor’s Choice in Gramophone, with the Quartet also being praised by The Guardian for its “lithe, lively sound and alert sense of structure and detail”. The Quartet’s critically acclaimed second release in 2017, entitled “Labyrinth”, explores the use of counterpoint in works by Mozart, Ligeti and Bach. Their most recent disc “Solitude” (2018) features works by Mendelssohn, Weinberg and Shostakovich curated around the theme of loss and loneliness, with The Strad praising the disc as “an intense listening experience that will have you on the edge of your seat”.

Other recent projects have included the world premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s opera Only the Sound Remains with Philippe Jaroussky and Dutch National Opera and a collaboration with director Rosabel Huguet re-imagining Beethoven’s Op 132 String Quartet for children. Entitled “Quartet! A card game with Beethoven” the Quartet takes the project to venues including the Vienna Konzerthaus, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Flagey and De Doelen as part of their ongoing commitment to education and outreach work.

Dudok Quartet
Photo: Marco Borggreve

Having first met as members of the Ricciotti Ensemble, a Dutch street symphony orchestra, the Dudok Quartet studied at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne with the Alban Berg Quartet and later at the Dutch String Quartet Academy with Marc Danel of the Danel Quartet. Other important mentors include Eberhard Feltz, Peter Cropper (Lindsay Quartet), Luc-Marie Aguera (Quatuor Ysaÿe) and Stefan Metz. Winner of a 2018 Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award, other awards include prizes at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition and Joseph Joachim International Chamber Music Competition Weimar as well as the prestigious Dutch Kersjes Prize (2014).

The Quartet performs on instruments generously on loan from the Dutch Musical Instrument Foundation (NMF); violins by Francesco Goffriller and Vincenzo Panormo, viola by Max Möller and cello by Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. The Quartet takes its name from renowned Dutch architect Willem Marinus Dudok (1884 – 1974). A great lover of music, Dudok came from a musical family and composed in his spare time, saying “I feel deeply the common core of music and architecture: after all, they both derive their value from the right proportions”.

About the Park Avenue Armory

Part palace, part industrial shed, Park Avenue Armory fills a critical void in the cultural ecology of New York by enabling artists to create, students to explore, and audiences to experience, unconventional work that cannot be mounted in traditional performance halls and museums. With its soaring 55,000-square-foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall—reminiscent of 19th-century European train stations—and an array of exuberant period rooms, the Armory offers a platform for creativity across all art forms. Together, these and other spaces within the historic building utilized for arts programming comprise the Thompson Arts Center, named in recognition of the Thompson family’s ongoing support of the institution.

Since its first production in September 2007, the Armory has organized and commissioned immersive performances, installations, and cross-disciplinary collaborations in its vast drill hall that defy traditional categorization and challenge artists to push the boundaries of their practice. In its historic period rooms, the Armory presents small-scale performances and programs, including its acclaimed Recital Series, which showcases musical talent from across the globe within the intimate salon setting of the Board of Officers Room; and the new Artists Studio series in the newly restored Veterans Room, which features innovative artists and artistic pairings that harken back to the imaginative collaboration and improvisation of the original group of designers who conceived the space. The Armory also offers robust arts education programs at no cost to underserved New York City public school students, engaging them with the institution’s artistic programming and the building’s history and architecture.

Programmatic highlights from the Armory’s first 10 years include Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s harrowing Die Soldaten, in which the audience moved “through the music”; the event of a thread, a site-specific installation by 18 Ann Hamilton; the final performances of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company across three separate stages; WS by Paul McCarthy, a monumental installation of fantasy, excess, and dystopia; an immersive Macbeth set in a Scottish heath and henge by Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh; a profound and radically inclusive staging of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion staged by Peter Sellars and performed by Sir Simon Rattle and the Berliner Philharmoniker; Louis Andriessen’s De Materie in a highly imaginative staging by director Heiner Goebbels that included floating zeppelins and a flock of 100 sheep; Circle Map, two evenings of immersive spatial works by internationally acclaimed composer Kaija Saariaho performed by the New York Philharmonic with mise-en-espace by Armory Artistic Director Pierre Audi; eight-time Drama Desknominated play The Hairy Ape, directed by Richard Jones and starring Bobby Cannavale; Pierre Boulez’s masterwork Répons, performed twice each evening by Ensemble intercontemporain and IRCAM under the baton of Matthias Pintscher with the audience changing seats in between to get a new sonic perspective; Simon Stone’s award-winning Yerma, starring Billie Piper in a devastating and modern exploration of Federico Garcia Lorca’s tale of a woman’s desire to have a child; and Nick Cave’s The Let Go, a complete transformation of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall into an immersive, multi-sensory dance-based town hall; and Ivo van Hove’s adaptation of Luchino Visconti’s screenplay of The Damned, starring Comedie-Française in a chilling and topical rumination on political depravity.

Concurrent with its artistic program, the Armory has undertaken an ongoing $215-million revitalization of its historic building, designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron.