by Nicholas Stevens
As the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth sweeps classical music audiences along a twelve-month, field-wide festival of heroics, experiments, rhapsodizing, and apocalyptic drive, a challenge arises for performers who plan to acknowledge the occasion. In a season peppered with all-Beethoven programs, how does one stand out? Of the many approaches that could thrill an audience and do justice to the composer, which ones serve the ensemble just as well? On a late January evening, the Amici Quartet offered their answer: impeccable playing and utter unity. [Read more…]
Since its founding in 1991, 
Is there any better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than listening to great classical chamber music performed by fantastic musicians— who are also donating their talents on behalf of a humanitarian cause? On Sunday, April 19 beginning at 3:00 pm in the Meeting House of First Church Oberlin, the Amici String Quartet will perform a benefit concert for 
This month’s Arts Renaissance Tremont concert brought the Amici String Quartet to the auditorium of Pilgrim UCC Church on Sunday afternoon, February 15, for the second performance in the group’s complete cycle of Beethoven quartets. A quick calculation suggests that this project will play out over five or six seasons (16 quartets, average of three quartets per performance), depending on how the Große Fuge figures in. 
Every week, Cleveland Orchestra audiences look forward to hearing the cello section’s lush sounds emerging from the surrounding group. On Friday night at CWRU’s Harkness Chapel, listeners had the unique opportunity to hear the section showcased outside of its orchestral setting in a remarkably delightful concert. iCellisti is an annual event organized by the Cleveland Cello Society and headed up by Ida Mercer, but this is the first year that the entire Cleveland Orchestra cello section was able to take part — except for one player who had a conflict.