Brentano String Quartet: Hsin-Yun Huang, viola

Works
Joseph Haydn: String Quartets, op. 33, no. 3, The Bird
James MacMillan: Viola Quintet
Johannes Brahms: Quintet for Strings in G Major, op. 111

Our season opening performance features the incomparable Brentano String Quartet. Having first performed in the Fife in 2014, the ensemble returns for the center’s 10th anniversary season, joined by leading violist and Juilliard faculty member Hsin-Yun Huang. The program includes Haydn’s string quartet, The Bird; Brahms’ exuberant Quintet for Strings in G Major; and the premiere of James MacMillan’s Viola Quintet, composed for the ensemble.

About Brentano String Quartet
Serena Canin, violin
Mark Steinberg, violin
Misha Amory, viola
Nina Lee, cello 

Since its inception in 1992 the Brentano String Quartet has appeared throughout the world to popular and critical acclaim. “Passionate, uninhibited and spellbinding,” raves the London Independent; the New York Times extols its “luxuriously warm sound [and] yearning lyricism.”

Within a few years of its formation, the quartet garnered the first Cleveland Quartet Award and the Naumburg Chamber Music Award and was also honored in the U.K. with the Royal Philharmonic Award for “Most Outstanding Debut.” Since then the quartet has concertized widely, performing in the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall in New York; the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.; the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam; the Konzerthaus in Vienna; Suntory Hall in Tokyo; and the Sydney Opera House.

In addition to performing the entire two-century range of the standard quartet repertoire, the Brentano Quartet maintains a strong interest in contemporary music and has commissioned many new works. Its latest project, a monodrama for quartet and voice called Dido Reimagined, was composed by Pulitzer-winning composer Melinda Wagner and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann and had its premiere in spring 2022 with soprano Dawn Upshaw. Other recent commissions include the composers Matthew Aucoin, Lei Liang, Vijay Iyer, James MacMillan, and a cello quintet by Steven Mackey (with Wilhelmina Smith, cello).

About Hsin-Yun Huang
Violist Hsin-Yun Huang has forged a career by performing on international concert stages, commissioning and recording new works, and nurturing young musicians. Highlights of her 2017-2018 season included performances as soloist under the batons of David Robertson, Osmo Vanska, Xian Zhang, and Max Valdes in Beijing, Taipei, and Bogota. She is also the first solo violist to be presented in the National Performance Center of the Arts in Beijing and was featured as a faculty member with Yo-Yo Ma and his new initiative in Guangzhou. She has commissioned compositions from Steven Mackey, Shih-Hui Chen, and Poul Ruders. Her 2012 recording for Bridge Records, Viola, won accolades from Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. Her next recording will be the complete unaccompanied sonatas and partitas of J. S. Bach, in partnership with her husband, Brentano violist Misha Amory.