The Borromeo String Quartet evolved from a summer project at the Curtis Institute of Music in 1989 to one of the most admired ensembles in the world. Its concert in the Barns at Wolf Trap will display the emotion and spirit that characterize its unique interpretation of classical and contemporary works.
Violinist Nicholas Kitchen grew up in North Carolina, where his mother runs the Duke University String School and his father, a math professor at Duke, has been the organist at a local church for the past 40 years. At Curtis, Kitchen met cellist Yeesun Kim, now his wife. Today these two founding members of BSQ share the stage with violinist Kristopher Tong and violist Mai Motobuchi.
Currently they are performing the complete Shostakovich quartet cycle at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston where they are artists-in-residence.
Accordingly, they open the Barns program with the composer’s “Concertino.” They close with Bartok’s “5th String Quartet,” said to be his most expressive and reflective of Beethoven’s influence. Before the intermission, they will debut “Ars Moriendi,” a piece written for them by Steve Mackey.
“Since we’re about to record it, we wanted to include it in the program,” Kitchen says. “Steve is an electric guitar player and also a scientist with a probing intellect. He’s a mixture of modern energy and thoughtful reserve.
“In the poetic sense, as we think of the great English and Irish poets, he is reserved and exudes an atmosphere charged with darkness behind it. He brings out richness in the piece, a depth of feeling and a fun side, as well, because he has an ear for pop music.”
A distinguished Professor of Music at Princeton University, the award-winning Mackey not only composes, but also performs with such ensembles as the Kronos Quartet, the New World Symphony and the London Sinfonietta. He is among the many composers the BSQ commissions, some others being John Cage, John Harbison, Gyorgy Ligeti and Jennifer Higdon.
In addition to the Gardner Museum residency, the BSQ is the faculty Quartet-in-Residence at the New England Conservatory of Music, at Dai-Ichi Semei Hall in Tokyo and at Taos Summer School of Music in New Mexico.
Always in search of better ways to promote chamber music and preserve BSQ performances, Kitchen founded the Living Archive Recorded Performance Series.
“Over the past 15 years, we’ve played more than 100 concerts per year of so much variety that I felt we should record all of them,” Kitchen says. “Since 2003, we’ve been able to provide DVDs and CDs of concerts performed around the world so that listeners who are otherwise unable to attend hear many new and rarely performed works.
“Music is the magic that creates something enormous, intimate, profound and humorous. Ultimately it exists only in one’s brain. It’s a union of four people on stage, a composer and those listening. We all come together to share something exciting and beautiful in a magic moment.”
IF YOU GO:
The Discovery Series presents the Borromeo String Quartet
When: 8 p.m.
Venue: The Barns at Wolf Trap, 1635 Trap Road, Vienna
Tickets: $30
Info: 877-965-3872, www.wolf-trap.org
