Dallas News: Classical CD Reviews – Late Beethoven, etc.
Source: Dallas News
May 7, 2012
by Scott Cantrell
Beethoven
A
The Late String Quartets
Cypress String Quartet (Cypress, three CDs)
Founded in San Francisco in 1996, the Cypress String Quartet hasn’t yet achieved the highest profile. Judging by this self-issued set of the late Beethoven quartets, though, it’s a superb foursome. Indeed, this is as fine a survey of these brilliant but challenging works as you’ll find anywhere. read more »
Baker & Taylor: What’s Hot
Source: Baker & Taylor's CD Hot List
May 2012
Title: The Late String Quartets
Label: Cypress Performing Arts Association
Composer: Ludwig Van Beethoven
Performer: Cypress String Quartet
UPC: 666449766121
Cat.#: CSQBC012-2
Period: Romantic
Genre: Classical
Release type: New (3-discs)
Comments: You can no more expect a quartet of talented and ambitious young string players to resist the temptation of Beethoven's late quartets than a politician to turn down a speaking invitation. And why should they, really, especially when they play with the kind of energy, warmth, and insight that the Cypress Quartet brings to this repertoire? read more »
Lucid Culture: Late Beethoven Done His Way
Source: Lucid Culture
April 24, 2012
There’s a school of thought that considers the string quartet repertoire to be the world’s most exciting music – an opinion advanced mostly by people who play those works. The Cypress String Quartet’s new triple-disc set of late Beethoven string quartets (Op. 127, 130,131, 132, 133 and 135) is an album for people who share that point of view. It’s less radical an interpretation than it might seem: in fact, it’s about as retro as possible, simply a dedication to following Beethoven’s dynamics to the letter. It may be the most Beethovenesque of all the recordings out there: the old grump, if he could have heard this, no doubt would have approved. read more »
Independent Coast Observer: Cypress Quartet delights audience at Arts Center
Source: Independent Coast Observer(Gualala, CA) (.pdf scan of original article)
March 23, 2012
by Lynn Bailey, special to the ICO
Sunday marked the fifth time the Cypress String Quartet has delighted Gualala Arts Chamber Music Series audiences.
Violinists Cecily Ward and Tom Stone, violist Ethan Filner and cellist Jennifer Kloetzel performed their 2012 "Call and Response" program, titled The Masters: Tradition, Rebellion, and Innovation to an appreciative audience that clung to every note and nuance with rapt attention. read more »
SFCV.org: The Spirit of Call And Response
Source:www.sfcv.org
March 20, 2012
By Niels Swinkels
Back at home in its favorite concert venue, San Francisco’s Cypress String Quartet (CSQ) played its program “Call & Response 2012,” subtitled “The Masters: Tradition, Rebellion, and Innovation, Friday at Herbst Theatre. Now in its 13th year, “Call & Response” connects the “call” of traditional string quartet repertoire with modern-day composers who “respond” with a new piece for Cypress. Since its inception as a string quartet, Cypress has commissioned and premiered more than 30 new compositions, many through this series. read more »
Midwest Record: Beethoven-The Late String Quartets (Review)
Source: Midwest Record
March 17, 2012
CHRIS SPECTOR, Editor & Publisher
CYPRESS STRING QUARTET/Beethoven-The Late String Quartets:
Like John Daly used to say when he hosted "What's My Line?", ‘panel, I'm jut going to throw all the cards over'. What is there to say when a bunch of committed pros deliver the goods on some serious works that need to be treated right and respected yet played with passion that's keeps the listener riveted? This three cd box of some complicated works written by a deaf guy is not for the feint of heart to even go near. This crew has hearts of steel. read more »
Examiner.com: Late Beethoven from the Cypress String Quartet
Source: Examiner.com
March 14, 2012
by Stephen Smoliar
The latest recording from the Cypress String Quartet (violinists Cecily Ward and Tom Stone, violist Ethan Filner, and cellist Jennifer Kloetzel) takes on an ambitious project. It is a three-CD box set of the six string quartet compositions from the “Late Period” of Ludwig van Beethoven, written between 1822 and 1826. All of the recordings were produced by Ward for the ensemble’s own label (Cypress Performing Arts Association); and the box includes a booklet with an essay by Joseph Kerman (author of The Beethoven Quartets), which provides an excellent guide to some of Beethoven’s most daringly adventurous work. read more »
SJ Mercury News: Cypress String Quartet revels in Ravel
Source: San Jose Mercury News
February 9, 2012
By Richard Scheinin
Consider two string quartets, locally based and with loyal followings, each in the midst of an important anniversary season (read big round number), and each performing a very French-inspired program, calling upon the musicians' mastery of color, texture and the like. We are talking about the Cypress String Quartet (in its 15th season) and the Alexander String Quartet (in its 30th), whose weekend concerts were worlds apart, in the end.
Let's start with the Cypress, whose Friday-night program was way more intimate and less ballyhooed and -- well, let's just say it -- more satisfying than the Alexander's bigger, star-studded event. Cypress played in the tiniest of venues: the 57-seat Pearson Theatre inside the headquarters of Meyer Sound Laboratories, the high-end audio technology mecca in Berkeley. This salon-size room is like a mini-Walt Disney Concert Hall, with vivid sound and an unforgiving acoustic in which no stray or errant noise goes unnoticed. read more »
SFCV.org: Singing Strings from the Cypress
Source: San Francisco Classical Voice
February 4, 2012
BY BE'ERI MOALEM
One look at the Cypress String Quartet program, and I couldn’t pass it up: Ravel’s incomparable Quartet in F, Erwin Schulhoff’s fierce little Five Pieces for String Quartet, and one of Cypress’ early Call & Response commissions: Jennifer Higdon’s Impressions, written as a response to Ravel’s quartet. The concert was set at 12 Gallagher Lane, a modern art gallery tucked in a side street of San Francisco’s gradually transforming SOMA district. read more »
21st-Century Music: Have Cellos, Will Travel
Source: 21st Century Music
MARCH 1, 2012
By Mark Alburger
Wagner fans travel all over the world to take in performances of the "Ring Cycle." New-music aficionados would do well to learn the way to Le Petit Trianon, the home of the San Jose Chamber Orchestra, which is doing its part to produce exciting concerts featuring living composers. At the ensemble's January 8 recital, the quick out-numbered the dead by 3 to 2 -- not bad odds for classical music, and those three extant writers were all in the hall to take in much-deserved adulation.
The climax was the dynamic, rhythmic, and bluesy Tiento (Fantasy) by Michael Touchi, a tour-de-force of minimalist and vernacular-tinged energy for eight cellos and string orchestra. Spinning off from Heitor Villa-Lobos's celloistic octet Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (also heard, and printed without the final titular consonants in the program), Touchi ups the ante by sending his cellists into contrapuntal array and disarray against the standing violins, violas, and bass hovering about. The riffs are relentless and appealing, and coloristic and call-and-response touches made their telling effects under the able baton of founder / music director Barbara Day Turner.
Previous to this, the Villa-Lobos shone forth from soprano Ronit Widman-Levy, in a haunting rendition that captured the essence of this baroque-and-brazilian mix. Like some surrealistic pillowy guitar, the cellos pluck and bow against operatic outpourings and hummings, making the case yet again for this most popular of the composer's works.
Related syncretism was evoked in Elena Ruhr's intriguing and inventive Cloud Atlas, after the novel by David Mitchell, where the beautiful solo cellist par excellence Jennifer Kloetzel (also of the Cypress String Quartet) found herself amidst a mixture of stylistic influences, old-and-new, atonal and neo-tonal-blue, all linked motivically by a perfect fifth, followed by another a half-step higher. By contrast, Anica Gallindo's innocent and sophisticated A Wintery Tale offered a pure, neo-romantic world of gorgeous tone and cinematic splendor.
Introducing each half of the program were seminal works by Johann Sebastian Bach, the first the well-known Cello Suite No. 1, again by the radiant Kloetzel, who took the opening Prelude at a breathtaking speed and articulated each phrase of the clever Minuets with passion and precision, bringing a lithe spirit to the concluding Gigue. Lazlo Varga's cello-quartet transcription of the Bach solo violin Sarabande and Bourree rounded out the program with intelligence and verve.
Strings Magazine: Cypress String Quartet Pays Homage to America’s Rich Musical Traditions
Strings Magazine
March 2012
By Heather K. Scott
Cypress String Quartet captures the majestic power of chamber music inspired by the nation’s diversity in sound
American music is one of those oddities that just defies categorization. There’s a diverse platter of folk music, various African-American music, and, of course, Native American music. It is a rich history of melody and dissonance: mountain-inspired tunes from the Appalachian and Rockies, folk from the prairie, African-American beauty from the South, miners’ camp ballads from the central north. And on and on. read more »
ArtsSF.com: Orchestra of a Hundred Premieres — And Now, Two More
Source: artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance
January 10-17, 2012
By Paul Hertelendy
SAN JOSE---The San José Chamber Orchestra, which recently completed its 20th year, brings forth the sounds of today in abundance. With its mostly-female string ensemble under Barbara Day Turner, it is the closest thing we have to the tradition of the (defunct) Women’s Philharmonic. The group is altogether unique: With 100 first-performances to its credit already, the SJCO presented two more world premieres Jan. 8, with cellos at the forefront. read more »
SJ Mercury News: Cellist Jennifer Kloetzel shines in premiere by Elena Ruehr at San Jose Chamber Orchestra
San Jose Mercury News
January 10, 2012
By Richard Scheinin
Sunday night's concert by the San Jose Chamber Orchestra ended with three composers taking bows on stage before a cheering audience at Le Petit Trianon. It was a love fest for living music, and the composers -- Elena Ruehr, Michael Touchi and Anica Galindo -- looked delighted, and possibly shocked. read more »
SF Classical Voice: BluePrint Builds a Castle to Hersant
San Francisco Classical Voice
November 19, 2011
by Be'eri Moalem
Philippe Hersant
Philippe Hersant was possibly the luckiest composer in the world Saturday night. In the season opener of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s BluePrint series, the 63-year-old French composer was treated to a two-hour concert of his own music by an all-star lineup of San Francisco’s best string players plus a deft ensemble of their students. read more »
Gramophone: The American Album reviewed in 12/2011 Issue
Click the clip below to read the article on www.exacteditions.com
Gramophone
December 2011
Page IX Sounds of America