The critically acclaimed Cypress String Quartet returns to Sonoma on Sunday, March 9, with a guest artist, to perform in concert at Vintage House senior center, Sonoma.
Their featured work will be Franz Schubert’s great String Quintet in C Major, D. 956. This concert is the second in Sonoma Classical Music Society’s 2014 Spring Series. Tickets are $20 for members of the Society, $25 for adults, and $10 for students. They will be available from the Society’s website, sonomaclassical.org, Readers’ Books, Pharmaca, Vintage House senior center and at the door.
At the March 9 concert, the Cypress String Quartet will perform Haydn’s String Quartet in D Major, Opus 76, #5, sometimes nicknamed “The Largo,” and one of the six Opus 76 quartets; Anton Webern’s “Langsamer Satz” (slow movement), written in 1906; Webern’s “5 Movements for String Quartet,” written in 1909 and in which he was continuing his exploration of atonality; and after intermission, Franz Schubert’s monumental “String Quintet in C Major (D. 956, op. posth. 163), the greatest string quintet in the musical literature, and featuring Jean-Michel Fonteneau as the second cello.
Formed in 1996, the Cypress String Quartet, comprised of Cecily Ward, violin, Tom Stone, violin, Ethan Filner, viola, and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello, is noted for its elegant performances and its sound has been called “beautifully proportioned and powerful.”
Jean-Michel Fonteneau, cello, is currently chair of the chamber music program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, is a founding member of the Ravel String Quartet.
The Cypress String Quartet has recently recorded the Beethoven Late Quartets, named “best classical CD of 2012 by the Dallas Morning News,” an all-Dvorak disc, and “The American Album,” featuring music of Barber, Griffes, and Dvorak. The quartet members trained individually at institutions including the Juilliard School, Interlochen Arts Academy, Cleveland Institute of Music, Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and the Royal Academy of Music.
An application for membership in the Sonoma Classical Music Society may be obtained at the website: sonomaclassical.org.
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