Ariel Quartet Performance at Carnegie Hall

When the Ariel Quartet last performed at Carnegie Hall, the ensemble had just won the coveted Cleveland Quartet Award for rising quartets. Now thoroughly established and critically acclaimed, the quartet returns with a program that showcases the genre as a flowing artistic lineage. It begins with a selection from the landmark Op. 33 quartets by Haydn—“the father of the string quartet”—and continues with Berg’s String Quartet No. 3. Caroline Shaw’s Blueprint follows, a piece conceived, in part, as a musical conversation between Haydn and his pupil, Beethoven, whose String Quartet, Op. 18, No. 6 echoes within Shaw’s piece. The performance concludes with Brahms’s First String Quartet, written as the composer grappled with the towering shadow of his own predecessor, Beethoven.