Beethoven / Ligeti / Lefkowitz: String Quartets

The members of this exceptional young string quartet, Quartet Integra – Kyoka Misawa and Rintaro Kikuno on violins, Itsuki Yamamoto on viola and cellist Ye Un Park – play classical, Romantic, contemporary and Renaissance music with equal excellence. The album begins with Ludwig van Beethoven’s last published work, String Quartet No. 16, composed in 1826, his final statement in his groundbreaking series. Beethoven wrote this piece at the height of his Romantic creative powers, but the quartet looks back with irony. Next, Quartet Integra turns to Ligeti’s groundbreaking Sonata No. 2 from 1968. They find beauty and tranquility in this 20-minute work, which actually requires seatbelts – mid-20th-century techniques and soundworlds meet humor and transcendent energy. The final piece is “Green Mountains, Now Black,” a new work by David S. Lefkowitz. The work quotes Monteverdi’s earliest surviving opera “Orfeo” and also passages from “The Coronation of Poppea,” including the magical and unmistakable love duet between Poppea and Emperor Nero. Rather than merely transcribing popular arias, choral passages and this famous duet for string quartet, Lefkowitz wrote a work that illuminates the fundamental nature of the string quartet. He experiments with the genre, pushes boundaries and incorporates his own despair at having witnessed a large part of Los Angeles go up in flames in the spring of 2025. Before their residency at Colburn, Quartet Integra won a four-year fellowship at the Suntory Hall Chamber Music Academy, where they were taught by members of the Tokyo Quartet, Koichiro Harada, Kikuei Ikeda and Kazuhide Isomura.