It’s A Fine Arts Quartet Festival

Chamber music lovers have a compelling reason to stay in town July 10 through 18: the Fine Arts Quartet Festival. The festival, including three free public concerts, features the internationally-renowned Fine Arts Quartet and six guest artists.

The festival was organized by Friends of the Fine Arts Quartet, a volunteer organization formed to arrange regular Milwaukee performances by the Fine Arts Quartet after the group ended a 25-year residency at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2018. The Quartet’s most recent appearance here was in January.

The festival opens at 3 p.m. Sunday, July 10, with a public concert at the Helene Zelazo Center for the Performing Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Two members of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, cellist Madeleine Kabat, and violist Alejandro Duque, will join the FAQ in performance of Mozart’s Viola Quintet in G minor and the String Sextet No. 2 in G major by Johannes Brahms.

A second concert at the Zelazo Center, at 7 p.m. Saturday, July 16, shares rarely-played early works by Romanian composer George Enescu (1881-1955). When Enescu began conservatory studies in violin, piano, and theory, he was only the second student to be admitted to the Vienna Conservatoire at the age of 7. (Violinist Fritz Kreisler was the first.) When George was 14, his father sent him to study violin and composition at the Paris Conservatoire.

Though Enescu’s virtuosity as a violinist earned him the first prize upon graduation from the Conservatoire in 1899, composition was his greatest love. In a radio interview given toward the end of his life, Enescu described himself as “drunk with music and not with giving performance on an instrument. I dreamt only about composing, composing, and again composing.”

The works on the July 16 program were written during or shortly after Enescu’s time at the Paris Conservatoire, where his composition professors included Jules Massenet and Gabriel Fauré.  Brazilian pianists Fabio and Gisele Witkowski will collaborate with Fine Arts Quartet members in the Prelude and Gavotte for two pianos, violin, and cello; Piano Quintet No. 1 in D major, and Pastorale, Menuet triste et Nocturne for violin and piano four hands. The concert concludes with Romanian Rhapsodie, Op. 11, arranged by Jacques Enoch for piano quintet and bass, played by guest artist Lizzie Burns. Written originally for orchestra and considered Enescu’s best-known work, the Rhapsodie quotes folk and dance tunes.

The final public festival event is an all-Mozart program at 7 p.m. Monday, July 18, at the Jewish Community Center. Pianist Alon Goldstein and double bassist Burns will play with the quartet in two Mozart Piano Concerti (No. 19 in F Major and No. 25 in C Major), arranged for string quintet and piano by Ignaz Lachner.

There are no tickets required for the 3 p.m. Sunday, July 10 and 7 p.m. Saturday, July 16 performances at the Zelazo Center, 2419 E. Kenwood Blvd.  Concert-goers are encouraged to wear masks.

While there is no charge for admission, online reservations are required for the closing concert at 7 p.m. Monday, July 19 at the Jewish Community Center, 6255 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Whitefish Bay.