The “Poetic License” program features works inspired by the written word in its many forms, including poetry and prose. Dvořák’s Cypresses were originally songs for voice inspired by an unrequited love. He later returned to these songs and arranged them for string quartet. Mendelssohn’s Op. 13 quartet also incorporates thematic material from a song that he composed earlier, “Is it true that you are always waiting for me in the arbored walk?” Kurtág’s Op. 28 is an homage, not only to the dedicatee Andreae Szervanszky, but also to Anton Webern, whose Cantata No. 2, Op. 31 he arranges as the central movement. Janáček wrote about his “Kreutzer Sonata”: “…I was imagining a poor woman, tormented and run down, just like the one the Russian writer Tolstoy describes in his Kreutzer Sonata.” Throughout the work, one can hear motives in the music that reflect Tolstoy’s story.

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Works to be performed on the “Poetic License” program include:

Dvořák, Cypress Quartets, “I Know That On My Love”
Mendelssohn, String Quartet No. 2 in A minor, Op. 13
Kurtág, Officium Breve In Memoriam Andreae Szervanszky, Op. 28
Dvořák, Cypress Quartets, “Death Reigns”
Janáček, String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer Sonata”

Program offered September through December, 2011.