Telegraph Quartet’s Weekend at 405 Shrader

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

Readers that follow events at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music probably know that today is Chamber Music Tuesday. This is a monthly series of side-by-side performances of students in the Chamber Music Program with faculty members. Tonight the participating faculty members will included three members of the Telegraph Quartet, violinist Eric Chin, violist Pei-Ling Lin, and cellist Jeremiah Shaw.

Towards the end of this month, violinist Joseph Maile will join his three colleagues when the Telegraph Quartet will perform two different programs over the course of a weekend at 405 Shrader. The first program will be a two-centuries-of-string-quartets offering. The first selection will be Grażyna Bacewicz’ fourth string quartet, written as her entry for the 1951 Concours international pour quatuor à cordes, held in Liège, which won the First Prize. This will be followed by Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 132 in A minor, one of his ambitious “late” string quartets, which he composed in 1825.

The second program will begin with John Harbison’s sixth quartet, which was jointly commissioned by Telegraph, along with the Lark Quartet and the Tanglewood Music Center. The quartet was given its world premiere by Lark on April 29, 2017 in Columbia, Maryland; and, two days later, the ensemble gave the New York premiere performance at Carnegie Hall. Telegraph performed the quartet for the first time on October 27, 2017 as part of the chamber music recital series presented by San Francisco State University. The remainder of the program will be devoted to two decidedly different twentieth-century compositions. The first of these will be Florence Price’s Five Folksongs in Counterpoint, which will be followed by Maurice Ravel’s only string quartet, composed very early in the twentieth century.

As might be guessed, 405 Shrader is the address of the venue, located at the corner of Oak Street near the Panhandle. Both performances will be part of the series called Aperitif Concerts for the Neighborhood, because all events begin at 7 p.m. (the aperitif hour), last about 50 minutes, and are followed by hosted aperitif service. These two concerts will be held on Friday, April 22, and Saturday, April 23, respectively. Accommodations are modest, usually admitting only 30 guests; so the only way to guarantee a seat will be to make a reservation. Tickets may be purchased through the 405 Shrader home page, which has a Concerts button that enables secure credit card transactions through Merchant One.