The DaPonte String Quartet will present a six-part series of online concerts March through June. Part one: “Beethoven - String Quartet No. 5 in A Major,”  is now available at onstage.daponte.org. All of the concerts will be available at onstage.daponte.org

Filmed at the beautiful Rockport Opera House in January 2021, the March 13 concert release is a work by the 20th century Czech composer, Erwin Schulhoff. It is a powerful piece with elements of jazz influence, dance rhythms, and grotesquely melancholy strains. Schulhoff was influenced by the Dada movement, and believed that “absolute art is revolution.”

This quartet is a four- movement work. It contains interesting harmonies and requires unusual techniques of its performers. It is powerfully rhythmic, and forcefully driven. Parts of the second movement are ethereal and wispy, giving way to the shocking and sudden elements of the third movement. The final movement may represent a foreshadowing of Schulhoff’s death. The foreboding music sounds a bit like a clock winding down, indicating the impending madness, leaving the silence of having nothing left.

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Feel free to contact DaPonte Executive Director Lisa Westkaemper, at 207-315-7105, or lisa@daponte.org Check out our website at www.daponte.org and on Facebook and YouTube.