Photo: Regina Hecht
HAGEN QUARTET
Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 8:00 p.m.
Pre-concert Lecture at 7:00 p.m.
Richardson Auditorium in Alexander Hall
Program
BEETHOVEN String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, "Serioso"
HAYDN String Quartet in E-flat Major, Op. 33, No. 2, "The Joke"
MOZART String Quartet in D Major, K. 575
About The Hagen Quartet
The Hagen Quartet comprises three siblings from Salzburg who have been playing together for more than 30 years, and a “newcomer” who joined them 25 years ago. Such is their renown and standing as the most enduring quartet in Europe that they seldom perform in the United States. A Wigmore Hall engagement was reviewed this way by The Independent: “Their performance was filled with subtlety and wonder… the playing was breathtaking in its precision, dynamism and agility – a thrilling encounter.” For their Princeton appearance, they pair a string quartet that ends rather comically by the “father” of the genre, and a somber one by Beethoven, who months before composing it confided to a friend, “If I had not read somewhere that a man may not voluntarily part with his life as long as a good deed remains for him to perform, I should long ago have been no more – and indeed by my own hand.” The concluding work by Mozart – given that he, too, was plagued by physical ailments and was, as usual, financially strapped when he wrote it – is surprisingly joyful.