Programs · Cultural Dossiers
Programs
Each program is an argument made in music — a set of works placed side by side so that one culture can be heard through another.
Dossier · Program I
Season 2026
Revolutionary German Quartets
Three German-language voices at the moment each broke with what came before — Beethoven's late vision framed by Strauss's youthful classicism and Wolf's sunlit Italian detour.
Historical context
The program begins with a nineteen-year-old Richard Strauss writing squarely inside the classical tradition he would later dismantle, and ends with Beethoven's Op. 130 — music that redrew the boundaries of what four string players could say to one another.
Between them stands Hugo Wolf's Italian Serenade, a single movement of southern light written by a composer whose imagination lived almost entirely in song. Heard together, the three works trace how revolution in chamber music has rarely announced itself loudly; it arrives in the handling of a phrase, a silence, a key.
Repertoire
- I.Richard StraussString Quartet in A Major, Op. 2
- II.Hugo WolfItalian Serenade
- III.Ludwig van BeethovenString Quartet in B-flat Major, Op. 130
Performances
- Wednesday, February 11, 2026Roland Park Place · Baltimore, Maryland
- Friday, February 13, 2026Residences at Vantage Point · Columbia, Maryland
- Sunday, February 15, 2026Christ Episcopal Church · Columbia, Maryland
- Monday, February 16, 2026Private Event · McLean, Virginia
- Tuesday, February 17, 2026Academy Art Museum · Easton, Maryland
- Thursday, May 28, 2026Millers Grant Lutheran Village · Ellicott City, Maryland
- Sunday, June 7, 2026International Student House of Washington, D.C. · Washington, D.C.
Dossier · Program II
Season 2026
Quartets of the Americas
Music of the Americas — North and South — gathered around Dvořák's “American” Quartet, the work of a European visitor who heard a new continent's voice before it had been written down.
Historical context
Barber's Op. 11 carries the Adagio that became a national elegy; Florence Price and William Grant Still write an American vernacular into the classical quartet with wit and formal poise; Piazzolla answers from Buenos Aires with the rigor of a fugue set loose in tango.
At the center sits Dvořák's Op. 96, composed in Iowa in 1893 — the outsider's portrait that made room for everything the rest of this program says from the inside.
Repertoire
- I.Samuel BarberString Quartet in B Minor, Op. 11
- II.William Grant StillDanzas de Panamá
- III.Florence PriceSlow Movement from a String Quartet
- IV.Antonín DvořákString Quartet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96, “American”
- V.Astor PiazzollaFuga y Misterio
Performances
- Friday, September 11, 2026St. Peter's Episcopal Church · Lewes, Delaware
- Saturday, September 12, 2026Millers Grant Lutheran Village · Ellicott City, Maryland
- Sunday, September 13, 2026McDaniel College · Westminster, Maryland
- Monday, September 14, 2026Residences at Vantage Point · Columbia, Maryland
Dossier · Program III
Season 2026
The Northern Quartets
A late-autumn program of northern light — Bohemian chorale, Haydn at his most severe, and Grieg's only completed quartet.
Historical context
Suk's Meditation on the old Czech chorale “St. Wenceslas” opens the program as a prayer written in wartime, its melody older than the nation that sings it.
Haydn's D minor quartet from Op. 20 shows the form's inventor at his most uncompromising, and Grieg's G minor Quartet closes with the folk material of the far north pressed into a large romantic structure. Barber's B minor Quartet joins them as the program's outlier — an American voice that shares their cold clarity.
Repertoire
- I.Josef SukMeditation on the Old Czech Chorale “St. Wenceslas,” Op. 35a
- II.Joseph HaydnString Quartet in D Minor, Op. 20 No. 4, Hob. III:34
- III.Samuel BarberString Quartet in B Minor, Op. 11
- IV.Edvard GriegString Quartet No. 1 in G Minor, Op. 27
Performances
- Saturday, November 21, 2026Residences at Vantage Point · Columbia, Maryland
- Sunday, November 22, 2026St. Paul’s, Kent · Chestertown, Maryland
- Friday, December 11, 2026Residences at Vantage Point · Columbia, Maryland
- Sunday, December 13, 2026Christ Episcopal Church · Columbia, Maryland