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Mid-life crisis adverted! The Cypress String Quartet on Beethoven's prolific middle years

Gregory Goode

Beethoven got comfortable in his own skin as he approached middle years. The ease that he felt during these years in Vienna is heard on the new release by the Cypress String Quartet. You can hear selections from this release on KBIA's daytime classical mix.

The Cypress String Quartet has been performing together now for nearly 20 years. They have released thirteen complete albums of their own featuring works from composers as wide-ranging as Antonin Dvorak, contemporary American composer Elena Ruehr, Josef Suk and last year’s offering that paired the quartet with cellist Gary Hoffman for a pair of quintets by Franz Schubert.

For sixteen of their twenty years, the quartet has led the non-profit Call and Responsethat brings classical music commissions and pieces from the standard string quartet repertoire into San Francisco Bay-area schools.

The quartet is made up of cellist Jennifer Kloetzel, violinists Tom Stone and Cecily Ward and violist Ethan Filner. In this interview, cellist Kloetzel and violinist Stone talked with KBIA's Trevor Harris by phone about their recent Avie Records release Beethoven: The Middle String Quartets.

String_Quartet_in_F_Allegro.mp3
Here's a sample of Beethoven's String Quartet in F from the new Cypress String Quartet release 'Beethoven: The Middle String Quartets.'

The new Cypress String Quartet release features five complete Beethoven string quartets written between 1806 and 1810 in Vienna. Kloetzel and Stone discussed Beethoven’s evolution, the quartet's (what sounds to me to be a quite rigorous) daily practice regimen and their two-decade long history together as an ensemble.

Listen to classical music weekdays between 9:00 and 3:00 on 91.3FM KBIA.

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