Prize-winning quartet from Japan will play Haydn, Ligeti and Brahms

By Peter Alexander Oct. 30 at 4:55 p.m.

Quartet Integra, the 2024 guest ensemble on the Takács Quartet’s campus concert series at CU Boulder, will perform in Grusin Music Hall Sunday afternoon and Monday evening (4 p.m. Nov. 3 and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 4; details below).

Following a traditional program format of classical-contemporary-Romantic works, they will perform Haydn’s String Quartet in B minor, op. 33 no. 1, György Ligeti’s String Quartet No. 2 and Brahms’s String Quartet No. 3 in B-flat major. Tickets are available for both in-person and online attendance.

The Quartet Integra—violinists Kyoka Misawa and Rinato Kikuno, violist Itsuki Yamamoto and cellist Ye Un Park—formed in 2015 and began their studies at the Toho Gakuen School of Music in Tokyo. They continued their academic work as a quartet as Fellows at the Suntory Hall Chamber Music Academy. They are currently enrolled in the Chamber Ensemble-in-Residence Program at the Colburn School in Los Angeles.

The Quartet won Second Prize and the Audience Award at the 2022 ARD International Music Competition, First Prize at the 2021 Bartók World Competition, and First Prize, the Prize of Beethoven and Grand Prix Award at the 2019 Akiyoshidai Music Competition. Upcoming performances include a New York debut at the Schneider Concert series at the New School, a contemporary recital at Boston Court, a recital as part of the Discovery Series at the La Jolla Music Society and the ECHO Chamber Music Series in El Cajon, California, among others. 

Past festival performances include the Suntory Chamber Music Garden Festival, the Kanazawa, Hukuyama and Takefu International Festivals. Quartet Integra has commissioned many new works from Japanese composers and given more than a dozen world premieres.

In 1779 Haydn’s employer, Prince Nicolaus Esterhazy, granted the composer the right to sell his works to publishers. One of the first sets of works where Haydn took advantage of that freedom was his set of six string quartets, composed in 1781 and known as Op. 33. Haydn wrote to a number of amateur musicians inviting them to subscribe to manuscript copies of the quartets, which he said were written “von einer Neu, gantz besonderer Art” (a new and entirely special way).

There is disagreement whether the six quartets truly represent a “new way” of composition, or the phrase was just salesmanship by Haydn. Either way, the set is regarded as one of Haydn’s major works defining the classical style. In addition to the manuscript parts Haydn offered, the quartets were published separately in Vienna, Berlin and London. Consequently, they were widely known, and may have been the inspiration for the six quartets Mozart wrote 1782–85 and dedicated to Haydn.

The second of Hungarian composer György Ligeti’s four string quartets was written in 1968 and dedicated to the La Salle Quartet, who played in the premiere in 1969. The five movements share related material but represent five different styles of musical motion, from gentle lyricism to mechanical pizzicato to fast and aggressive, and other stops in between.

Brahms composed three string quartets that have survived, as well as a large number of early quartets that he destroyed. The one known as his Third Quartet, composed in 1875, was dedicated to Theodor Wilhelm Engelmann, an amateur cellist, in spite of which it contains no major themes or solos for the cello. Later Brahms wrote to Engelmann, “This quartet rather resembles your wife—very dainty but brilliant.”

It is one of Brahms’s most animated and cheerful works. The first and fourth movements are particularly playful, full of bouncing, propulsive rhythms. The central movements—a wistful slow movement and an agitated waltz movement—are move serious in mood.

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Quartet Integra

• Haydn: String Quartet in B minor, op. 33 no. 1
• György Ligeti: String Quartet No. 2
• Brahms: String Quartet No. 3, op. 67

4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 3 and 7:30p.m. Monday, Nov. 4
Grusin Music Hall

In-person and streaming tickets HERE