Calidore String Quartet Performs Music by Mendelssohn and Dvorák in Center for the Performing Arts Free Online Program

Calidore String Quartet performs in a free streaming concert available March 10-17 through the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State. Photo by Marco Borggreve

Calidore String Quartet performs in the next episode of “Front Row: National,” streaming online for free through the Center for the Performing Arts at Penn State.

The event begins at 7:30 p.m. on March 10, and will be available to stream until 7:30 p.m. on March 17 at cpa.psu.edu/events/cmslc-march-10.

The program features Quartet in F minor for Strings, Op. 80, by Felix Mendelssohn; and Quintet in G Major for Two Violins, Viola, Cello and Bass, Op. 77, by Antonín Dvorák. Double bassist Xavier Foley will accompany the Calidore musicians — violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry and cellist Estelle Choi — on the quintet.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center free online concert series features an introduction by organization co-artistic directors David Finckel and Wu Han and an interview with the quartet musicians during intermission.

The program is part of the Center for the Performing Arts “Up Close and Virtual” 2020–21 season. Contributions from the members of the center and a grant from the University Park Student Fee Board help make the program free of charge.

Calidore’s name represents the “golden state” of California and its reverence for diversity in the quartet’s home city of Los Angeles. In October, the quartet released its second album, “Babel,” which includes works by Robert Schumann, Dmitri Shostakovich and Center for the Performing Arts alum Caroline Shaw. Calidore, praised by a Los Angeles Times reviewer for its musicians’ intuitive balance of “intellect and expression,” celebrated its 10^th anniversary during the 2019–20 season by honoring Ludwig van Beethoven’s birth with performances of his string quartets.

Finckel and Han previously performed at the Center for the Performing Arts as a duo in 2005, and with violinist Philip Setzer in 2017 and 2018 for the Beethoven Piano Trios. Finckel also performed at Penn State—in 1990, 2002 and 2009—when he was a member of Emerson String Quartet.