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Joseph Haydn: Quartet in F Minor, Op. 20, no.5

Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Quartet No. 2 in E-flat Major, Op. 26

Franz Schubert: Quartet in D Minor, D810, Death and the Maiden

 

SMITHSONIAN CHAMBER MUSIC SOCIETY audiences are privy to the unparalleled experience of being able to hear two magnificent quartets of instruments—one made by Antonio Stradivari, the other by his teacher Nicolò Amati—in this popular three-concert series. The Axelrod Quartet, which now includes violinist Mark Fewer, presents three programs, each of which is anchored by one of Schubert’s last quartets. Works of quartet masters Haydn, Beethoven, and Shostakovich are joined by three 20th-century works related, in their diversity, to varied interests of the National Museum of American History. The Austrian-American Erich Wolfgang Korngold is probably most widely known for the nearly two dozen Hollywood film scores he wrote in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s (among them The Advertures of Robin Hood, for which he won the Academy Award in 1934), but many of his operas, orchestral and chamber works, songs, and piano music employ the same appealingly kaleidoscopic harmonic palette.