Telegraph String Quartet featuring DMA candidates Jinzhao Xu, piano, and Youngeun Lee, cello

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PROGRAM
Selections from Antonin Dvořák’s Cypresses for String Quartet, B. 152
Kenji Bunch – String Quartet No. 2 “Concussion Theory”
-intermission-
Josef Suk – Piano Quintet, Op. 8

The Telegraph Quartet performs a concert of works featuring the folk elements of two champions of the Czech style and another by American Kenji Bunch that draws its inspiration from the traditions of rural Oklahoma against the stark backdrop of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. The concert will start with four tender songs written by a young Dvořák courting his first love, followed by the varyingly hopeful and dreadful intensity of Kenji Bunch’s “Concussion Theory” – a work built around the misplaced theory of that time among certain towns that dynamite exploded in the atmosphere could spur on rainfall to end their crippling drought. Rounding out the program is a monumental Czech work, a piano quintet by Dvořák’s son-in-law and greatest protege, Josef Suk. For this, the Telegraph Quartet will welcome two stellar University of Michigan doctoral candidates, pianist Jinzhao Xu and cellist Youngeun Lee, competition winners in their own right.

ABOUT SMTD’s QUARTET-IN-RESIDENCE

The TELEGRAPH QUARTET (Eric Chin and Joseph Maile, violins; Pei-Ling Lin, viola; Jeremiah Shaw, cello) formed in 2013 with an equal passion for standard and contemporary chamber music repertoire. Described by the San Francisco Chronicle as “…an incredibly valuable addition to the cultural landscape” and “powerfully adept… with a combination of brilliance and subtlety,” the Telegraph Quartet was awarded the prestigious 2016 Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award and the Grand Prize at the 2014 Fischoff Chamber Music Competition. The Quartet is currently the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Michigan.

The Quartet has performed in New York City’s Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Chamber Masters Series, and at festivals including the Chautauqua Institute, Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festival, and the Emilia Romagna Festival. They have collaborated with pianists Leon Fleisher and Simone Dinnerstein; cellists Norman Fischer and Bonnie Hampton; violinist Ian Swensen; and the St. Lawrence Quartet and Henschel Quartett. A fervent champion of 20th- and 21st-century repertoire, the Telegraph Quartet has premiered works by Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Robert Sirota, and Richard Festinger.

In August 2023, the Telegraph Quartet released its latest album Divergent Paths, the first in a series of recordings titled 20th Century Vantage Points, on Azica Records. Divergent Paths, featuring Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major and Schoenberg’s String Quartet No. 1 in D minor, Op. 7, follows Into The Light (Centaur, 2018), an album highlighting a gripping set of works by Leon Kirchner, Anton Webern, and Benjamin Britten.