Artemis String Quartet

Mendelssohn’s exuberant String Quartet in D Major, the first movement of which calls to mind his famous Octet, was written less than a year into his marriage and following the birth of his first child in 1838. Nine years later, after his beloved sister Fanny died, he wrote, “With her kindness and love she was part of myself every moment of my life… I will never, never be able to get used to it. Perhaps she is lucky, in her marvelously harmonious existence, not to have experienced the pain of old age, of life gradually ebbing….” His anguished Quartet in F Minor was a memorial to Fanny. Within six months of her passing, Mendelssohn, too, escaped the pain of old age, dead at 38. These very disparate works, along with music of Bach and Piazzolla, will be in the sensitive hands of the Berlin-based Artemis String Quartet, one of the leading ensembles of their generation.

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Members of the Artemis Quartet will coach Princeton students in a masterclass open to the public on Friday, March 15, 2013  – 10:30AM-12:30PM in Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall.