Borromeo String Quartet to present evening of Shostakovich, Beethoven and Bach

The Borromeo String Quartet will visit UB on Oct 7 to present late works of the legendary composers Shostakovich (String Quartet No. 12) and Beethoven (Op. 130 with the original Grosse Fuge) as part of the Slee/Visiting Artist Series.

The concert, to take place at 7:30 p.m. in Lippes Concert Hall in Slee Hall, North Campus, also will open with Bach’s Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1, transcribed by Borromeo violinist Nicholas Kitchen.

Kitchen will present a talk before the performance at 6 p.m. that will feature discussion of the Beethoven manuscripts.

Tickets are $15 for the general public, $10 for UB faculty/staff/alumni, seniors and non-UB students. UB students are free with ID. Tickets may be purchased in person at the Center for the Arts box office, online at www.tickets.com or one hour before the concert at the Slee box office.

Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, the Borromeo continues to be a pioneer in its use of technology and is the first string quartet to utilize laptop computers on the concert stage. Reading music this way helps push artistic boundaries, allowing the artists to perform solely from four-part scores and composers’ manuscripts, a revealing and metamorphic experience that these dedicated musicians now teach to students around the world.

As The New York Times noted, “The digital tide washing over society is lapping at the shores of classical music. The Borromeo players have embraced it in their daily musical lives like no other major chamber music group.”

Moreover, the quartet often leads discussions enhanced by projections of handwritten manuscripts, investigating with the audience the creative process of the composer.

The quartet has been ensemble-in-residence at the New England Conservatory and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for 23 years and has worked extensively as performers and educators with the Library of Congress (highlighting both its manuscripts and instrument collections), the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and the Taos School of Music.