The Ciompi Quartet

Presented by Caroline Stinson (cello).

Tickets available from the Duke University Box Office.

The final concert in the summer series features Caroline Stinson performing with the Lydian String Quartet, Rachel Calin (bass) and Adriana Linares (viola).

Program: Boccherini Cello Quintet Night Music of the Streets of Madrid; John Harbison Presences for solo cello, string quartet, and bass, commissioned to honor the young cellist, David Anderson (1978-1998); Brahms Sextet for Strings in G Major OP 36, the early joyful flowering of Brahms’ musical voice.

Caroline Stinson is cellist with the Ciompi String Quartet at Duke where she is Associate Professor of the Practice and directs Chamber Music. Ms. Stinson performs widely as a soloist, recitalist and chamber musician, appearing at Zankel Hall (Carnegie), The Gardner Museum (Boston) and The Smithsonian (DC); the Koelner Philharmonie, Lucerne Festival and Cité de la Musique in Europe, and the Centennial Centre in Canada. She is Principal Cello of Orchestra Lumos in Connecticut, under the direction of Michael Stern, and is co-Artistic Director of Weekend of Chamber Music in the Catskill Mountain Region with her husband Andy Waggoner. Ms. Stinson has premiered dozens of works for solo cello, concerti and chamber music, and her many recordings include the solo CD Lines on Albany Records.

Links to guest artists:

Lydian String Quartet

Rachel Calin, bass

Adriana Linares, viola

From Caroline Stinson:  The Lydian have had a long relationship with John Harbison, whose work “Presences” for solo cello, string quartet and bass we will perform, and eventually record. I’m looking forward to performing the work again; I first learned it back in 2016 and performed it with the Verona Quartet.

From the composer: “Presences, for solo cello, string quartet, and bass viol, was commissioned by Charles Felsenthal to honor his friend, the young cellist, David Anderson (1978-1998). With the help of many materials furnished to me by the commissioner — news articles, photographs, concert programs, poems, and personal memories — I conceived of an informal, un-stylized piece, not a threnody or tombeau, but something which might permit David Anderson’s cello-voice — which unfortunately I never heard or knew — to be known and heard again through the porous curtain which shields us from the other side.”

— John Harbison