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Beethoven Op. 135 and Rochberg “Quartet No. 3”What remains when an artist reaches the end of one language and must find another?
Axiom Quartet’s fifth concert of Eternally Modern brings together Beethoven’s final completed quartet and George Rochberg’s monumental Third Quartet, one of the great turning points in American chamber music. Beethoven’s Op. 135 is compact, lucid, and enigmatic. It asks the famous question, “Must it be?” and answers, “It must be,” but the music refuses to behave like a tragic farewell. Instead, it is witty, searching, compressed, and strangely light.
Rochberg’s Quartet No. 3 comes from a very different crisis. After the death of his son, Rochberg found that strict serialism could not carry the grief he needed to express. His Third Quartet marked a radical return to tonality, memory, quotation, and direct emotional speech. Paired with Beethoven’s last completed quartet, Rochberg asks what remains after modernism, and whether the past can return not as nostalgia, but as necessity.
The evening includes brief verbal context from the quartet, complimentary wine, and a 15-minute intermission. Business casual attire is suggested. The full concert experience will last approximately 1 hour and 40 minutes.
Join Axiom Quartet on Thursday, April 29 at 7:30 p.m. at Musik Halle at Houston Sängerbund, 1703 Heights Blvd., Houston, TX 77008.
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1703 Heights Blvd, Houston, TX 77008-4023, United States
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