Oxford vocalist performs ground-breaking string quartet
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Soprano Audrey Luna, a voice instructor at Miami University, will be the special guest of the renown Amernet String Quartet when it makes its Cincinnati debut next week.
She will perform Arnold Schoenberg’s Quartet No. 2, a rare piece of music in the canon of string quartets because it is one of the few that includes parts for a vocalist.
“Schoenberg’s groundbreaking Quartet No. 2 was the beginning of his adventure into atonality,” she said. “I’ve sung this piece dozens of times with the Hagen Quartet in Europe and look forward to performing it with the renowned Amernet String Quartet.”
Schoenberg wrote the quartet in 1908. The first two movements use traditional key signatures, but the final two movements uses poems by the German mystical poet Stefan George, not only breaks with previous string-quartet practice by incorporating a soprano vocal line but also ventures into atonality.
“The last line is 'I feel wind from another planet, combining the expressionistic style of poetry with the atonality of the music,” she said. “That is, rather than relying on the traditional style of chords based on three-note groups (or triads), the structure is more flexible and “each note is as significant as the next.
“It was a challenge when I first began to look at it because it’s a lot more dissonant than anything else I’d ever done,” she said. “It’s also a real tour de force for the string quartet.”
The audience is invited to learn more about the music at a pre-concert lecture with Bowling Green State University musicologist Effie Papanikolaou at 7 p.m.
“Interestingly, when they add another instrument to a string quartet, it becomes a something quintet,” she said. “For instance, if you add a piano, it’s a piano quintet. But only when its a vocalist that’s added does it remain a quartet.”
The program also includes two classical string quartets—Haydn’s Quartet, Opus 74, No.3, “Rider,” and Beethoven’s Quartet in A Minor, Opus 132.
