Program Details for Telegraph Quartet at SFCM

Telegraph Quartet members Eric Chin, Jeremiah Shaw, Pei-Ling Lin, and Joseph Maile (photograph by Matthew Washburn, courtesy of Jensen Artists)

Some readers may recall that the final Faculty Artist Series recital for this month at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) will be presented by the Telegraph Quartet. This ensemble is the SFCM quartet-in-residence; and three of its members graduated in 2012, violinists Eric Chin and Joseph Maile and violist Pei-Ling Lin. They are joined by cellist Jeremiah Shaw.

Since its formation in 2013, this ensemble has had a stimulating commitment to breadth of repertoire. That commitment led them to receive the Grand Prize at the 2014 Chamber Music Competition, followed by the prestigious Walter W. Naumburg Chamber Music Award in 2016. That latter accolade entailed their debut performance under the auspices of San Francisco Performances in Herbst Theatre at the end of January in 2017.

The program Telegraph has prepared for the fall recital at SFCM reflects the diversity of the group’s repertoire. They will begin with what is probably the last of Joseph Haydn’s completed string quartets, Hoboken III/82 in F major, the second of the two quartets published as Opus 77 in 1799. If Haydn took a retrospective stance in composing this quartet, then that stance will be complemented by the prospective stance of one of the earliest published compositions by Alban Berg, his Opus 3 string quartet. This quartet reflects not only Berg’s studies with Arnold Schoenberg but also his desire to forge trails of his own. Past and present are then conjoined in the final selection, Benjamin Britten’s Opus 36 (second) string quartet in C major. This quartet was first performed on the exact 250th anniversary of the death of English composer Henry Purcell; and the composition itself views Purcell’s approaches to composition through a modern lens. The connection is most evident in the last of the three movements, which Britten explicitly named “Chacony.”

This concert will take place on Wednesday, October 23, beginning at 7:30 p.m.. The venue will be the SFCM Sol Joseph Recital Hall. The SFCM building is located at 50 Oak Street, between Van Ness Avenue and Franklin Street, a short walk from the Van Ness Muni Station. There will be no charge for admission, but reservations are highly recommended. Tickets may be reserved through a hyperlink on the event page for this recital on the SFCM Web site.