Examiner.com:The Cypress String Quartet comes to the de Young Museum
Examiner.com
July 7, 2010
by Stephen Smoliar
At 7 PM on Friday, July 23, the Cypress String Quartet (Cecily Ward, violin; Tom Stone, violin; Ethan Filner, viola; and Jennifer Kloetzel, cello) will perform in the Koret Auditorium at the de Young Museum inGolden GatePark. The Museum offers a weekly series of "Friday Night Soirées," which they call Cultural Encounters; and the Cypress performance, entitled Impressions, Then and Now…, is one of five events scheduled for that evening. Their choice of title reflects the Museum's current exhibit, Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musée d'Orsay. In keeping with the theme, the Cypress will perform Claude Debussy's Opus 10 string quartet in G minor and Jennifer Higdon's Impressions. The performance will be complemented by images from the d'Orsay exhibit.
Regular readers know about the Quartet's Call & Response project. Impressions was commissioned in 2003 as part of this project; and, in the spirit of this project, Higdon's composition may be approached as a "response" to the "call" of the Debussy quartet. TheCypresshas recorded both works but, unfortunately, not on a single CD. Their performance of Impressions was released byNaxosunder their American Classics series in December of 2006, while they released a performance of the Debussy quartet on their own label the following month. Fortunately, both of these compositions are available for download from Amazon.com; so interested readers can construct their own playlist of the audio portion of the entire de Young recital. However, the full impact of the actual performance can only be appreciated with the images that will make it a multimedia experience.
The price of admission to the recital will be absorbed by the admission fee for the Museum. Further information may be obtained from the de Young Museum at 415-750-3600. This particular event also has its own Web page on the de Young Web site.