Composers work off each other to push the envelope and inspire more creativity. Greatness inspires greatness.
Delgani String Quartet — violinists Anthea Kreston and Jannie Wei, violist Kimberlee Uwate and cellist Eric Alterman — explores and celebrates that connection with a pair of Eugene concerts that covers four composers whose work spans hundreds of years.
Blueprints starts with Ludwig van Beethoven’s Sixth Quartet, published in 1801, which culminates in the “La Malinconia” (Melancholy) movement. The pull between joy and despair throughout the piece would inspire Caroline Shaw to compose Blueprint in 2016, the second piece of the concert. Shaw is best known as the 2013 recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in Music for the a capella piece Partita for 8 Voices.
After intermission, Delgani will take listeners to England, first to Henry Purcell’s Fantasias, composed in 1680. Purcell was a prolific and legendary composer during the English Baroque period, and fellow Britain Benjamin Britten (War Requiem, the opera The Turn of the Screw, among others) paid homage to him in 1945 with his Quartet No. 2, which will be Delgani’s final selection of the concert.