(MADISON, NJ) -- The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center will perform The Kreutzer Connection on Saturday, October 27th at 8:00pm in the Dorothy Young Center at Drew University in Madison. Like Tolstoy’s shocking novella, The Kreutzer Sonata, this thrilling, theatrical program turns on Beethoven’s violin sonata. Janáček’s quartet vividly captures Tolstoy’s action. One of Kreutzer’s own beguiling Caprices and other highly-charged works complete this fascinating program. The concert features exceptional young musicians,  including the Calidore String Quartet and Angelo Xiang Yu, a Winner of the prestigious Yehudi Menuhin International Violin Competition.

Both artists are current members of the newly renamed Bowers Program, which recognizes outstanding young musicians. Formerly called CMS Two, the program was newly renamed following the five-million dollar gift from Ann S. Bowers—the largest individual gift in Chamber Music Society’s 48-year history.

The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center (CMS) is one of eleven constituents of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, the largest performing arts complex in the world. Along with other constituents such as the New York Philharmonic, New York City Ballet, Lincoln Center Theater, and The Metropolitan Opera, the Chamber Music Society has its home at Lincoln Center, in Alice Tully Hall. Through its performance, education, and recording/broadcast activities, it draws more people to chamber music than any other organization of its kind.

The partnership of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and Drew University brings seasonal concerts to the Concert Hall. CMS has been a residency partner with Drew since the 2006-2007 season with the help and friendship of co-Artistic Directors, Wu Han and David Finckel.

Additional info on Calidore Quartet - The Quartet is getting ready to release an album called “Resilience,” their debut for Signum, on October 12th. The album includes performances of quartets by Mendelssohn, Prokofiev, Golijov and Janáček exploring the human potential to create beauty, even in times of conflict. 

The Quartet has been praised by the New York Times for its “deep reserves of virtuosity and irrepressible dramatic instinct” and by the Los Angeles Times for its balance of “intellect and expression.” After their Kennedy Center debut the Washington Post proclaimed that “Four more individual musicians are unimaginable, yet these speak, breathe, think and feel as one…The grateful audience left enriched and, I suspect, a little more human than it arrived.” The Calidore String Quartet has enjoyed an impressive number of accolades, including a 2018 Avery Fisher Career Grant, and the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award. The Calidore made international headlines as winner of the $100,000 Grand-Prize of the 2016 M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, the largest prize for chamber music in the world. The quartet was also the first North American ensemble to win the Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowship and was named BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists. 2018-19 is the Calidore’s third year in residence with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s CMS Two program. Within two years of their founding in 2010, the Calidore String Quartet won grand prizes in virtually all the major U.S. chamber music competitions, including the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake, and Yellow Springs competitions and captured top prizes at the 2012 ARD Munich International String Quartet Competition and Hamburg International Chamber Music Competition.

The Program for October 27:

Beethoven - Quartet in F minor for Strings, Op. 95, “Serioso” (1810-11)

Prokofiev - Sarcasms, Five Pieces for Piano, Op. 17 (1912-14)

Janácek - Quartet No. 1 for Strings, “The Kreutzer Sonata” (1923)

Kreutzer - Caprice No. 35 in E-flat Major for Violin (1796)

Beethoven - Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano, Op. 47, “Kreutzer” (1802-03)

Juho Pohjonen, Piano; Angelo Xiang Yu, Violin; Calidore String Quartet; Ryan Meehan, Violin; Jeffrey Myers, Violin; Jeremy Berry, Viola; Estelle Choi, Cello

The Dorothy Young Center is located at 36 Madison Ave in Madison, New Jersey.