Quartetto di Cremona to play at the Simms Center for the Performing Arts on March 3

Feb. 25—Chamber Music Albuquerque presents Quartetto di Cremona in concert at 3 p.m. Sunday, March 3, at the Simms Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Albuquerque Academy.

The program features Dmitri Shostakovich's "String Quartet No. 8 in C minor, Op 110," Osvaldo Golijov's "Tenebrae," Franz Schubert's "String Quartet in D minor, D. 810, (Death and the Maiden)."

Quartetto di Cremona features Cristiano Gualco and Paolo Andreoli on violin, Simone Gramaglia on viola and Giovanni Scaglione on cello.

A 2002 contemporary composition by Osvaldo Golijov is timely. The composer says, "I wrote 'Tenebrae' as a consequence of witnessing two contrasting realities in a short period of time in September 2000. I was in Israel at the start of the new wave of violence that is still continuing today, and a week later I took my son to the new planetarium in New York, where we could see the Earth as a beautiful blue dot in space.

"I wanted to write a piece that could be listened to from different perspectives. That is, if one chooses to listen to it 'from afar,' the music would probably offer a 'beautiful' surface but, from a metaphorically closer distance, one could hear that, beneath that surface, the music is full of pain ... The compositional challenge was to write music that would sound as an orbiting spaceship that never touches ground."

Quartetto di Cremona's upcoming recordings include the ensemble's own version of "The Art of the Fugue" performed with seven instruments so as not to alter the original writing of Johann Sebastian Bach's score.

Since its formation in 2000, the Quartetto di Cremona has established a reputation as one of the most exciting chamber ensembles on the international stage. Regularly invited to perform in major music festivals and halls in Europe, North and South America, and the Far East, they garner universal acclaim for their high level of interpretive artistry.