Arditti Quartet Performance (Aug. 22, 2020)

Arditti Quartet: (from left) Irvine Arditti (violin), Ashot Sarkissjan (violin), Lucas Fels (cello), and Ralf Ehlers (viola). Photo by Alexandre Delmar

During the Fall 2020 portion of their CAI residency, the world-renowned Arditti Quartet performed "live" in a new way and we are thrilled to invite you to join us.

“Music played and heard at the moment creates a unique connection that is both deep and fragile....What we need now are other spaces, built and in our heads, in order to be able to present music in a live, living way. Smaller, “private” moments, whose preciousness gives us the courage to continue on the path of rapprochement together. ”
Irvine Arditti

Ongoing travel restrictions  due to COVID-19 required creative solutions. This portion of the Arditti Quartet's CAI residency took place in virtual space. The musicians performed via live feed from the Hellerau European Centre for the Arts in Dresden, Germany.

"The Arditti Quartet is going to HELLERAU: “European Centre for the Arts” is not only the name of the institution, but for us now the place where we (may) come together again from different European countries for rehearsals, discussions and presentations of everything that we should have performed (for the first time) on our travels through Europe, Asia and America."

The program for their August 22 performance included:

Elliott Carter - String Quartet No. 5 (1995)

David Felder - Third Face (1988)

Harrison Birtwistle - The Tree of Strings (2007)

This was the first time the Arditti Quartet performed together since pandemic lockdowns began.

About the Arditti Quartet

The Arditti Quartet enjoys a global reputation for their spirited and technically refined interpretations of contemporary and earlier 20th century music. Several hundred works have been written for the ensemble since its foundation by violinist Irvine Arditti in 1974 and have given the Arditti Quartet a firm place in music history. The quartet’s extensive discography now features well over 200 CDs and many works have been recorded in the composers’ presence. Over the past 45 years, the ensemble has received many prizes for its work. It has won the Deutscher Schallplatten Preis several times and the Gramophone Award for the best recording of contemporary music three times. The prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize was awarded to them in 1999 for lifetime achievement in music.