Daedelus Quartet returns for encore Coastal Concerts perfomance

Coastal Concerts’ 2009-‘10 season continues on Saturday, Feb. 27 with a very special 50th concert “encore” performance by the Daedelus Quartet.            

Founded in summer 2000, the Daedelus Quartet - as their name suggests - took off and flew, capturing the Grand Prize at the Banff International String Quartet Competition just a year later. More recently, the Philadelphia Inquirer raved, “So blended is their sound that when a passage was passed from player to player, you sometimes had to watch carefully to figure out when the handover was made.”

Named by Carnegie Hall to participate in the ECHO (European Concert Hall Organization) Rising Stars program, Daedelus is currently Quartet-in-Residence at both University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University. Recent appearances include an all-Beethoven program at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall as well as performances at Vassar College and Haverford College.

The evening will begin with a Mozart string quartet (no.22 in B-flat Major, K. 589) written the year before his death. This piece demands much of the musicians, taking the audience through a range of moods and emotions – tender, sparkling, opera-like, angry, and dancelike to name just a few.

Next on the scheduled program is a modern piece (written in 1994), Joan Tower’s String Quartet no.1, known as “Night Fields.” Although Ms. Tower prefers to let her music speak for itself, she does provide a description of some of the moods of this piece as “a cold windy night in a wheat field, lit up by a bright full moon….”

Daedelus will conclude the evening’s performance with Beethoven’s String Quartet no.14 in C-Sharp Minor, op. 131, also written in the last year of the composer’s life. A complex and exciting piece, op. 131 opens with a fugue, passes through several transformations, and concludes in violent triumph.

A celebration of the 50th concert begins Friday, Feb. 26, at The Inn at Canal Square in Lewes. Enjoy light fare and wine as you mingle with members of the Daedalus Quartet, scholarship winner Maria Scott, and fellow music lovers. For tickets, call 888-212-6458.

IF YOU GO
Tickets for Coastal Concerts performances are $20, with discounted admission available for series purchases. Youth ages 10 to 18 are given free admission at the door for themselves and one accompanying adult. Series tickets can be purchased on line at www.coastalconcerts.org or by calling 888-212-6458. Individual tickets may be purchased at the door, or in advance at the Lewes Chamber of Commerce, Lewes Gourmet and PUZZLES on Front Street in downtown Lewes.