Buzzy London-based Elias String Quartet brings verve to Vancouver, March 14

Works by Stravinsky, Beethoven, and Hadyn are on the bill

By Gail johnson

Elias String Quartet.

Friends of Chamber Music presents Elias String Quartet on March 14 at 7:30 pm at Vancouver Playhouse

Intense, vibrant and full of personality: these are descriptors of London, England’s Elias String Quartet.

Taking its title from the German name of Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah, the group is ensemble in residence at Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where it formed in 1998.

In between touring to Boston, San Francisco, Vancouver, and Houston, the acclaimed group is coming to Vancouver for a return Friends of Chamber Music performance.

Featuring violinists Sara Bitlloch and Donald Grant, violist Simone van der Giessen, and cellist Marie Bitlloch—“2 French/Catalan sisters, a Swedish viola player and a Scot”, as the artists put it on their website—the quartet will perform Haydn’s String Quartet in F-sharp Minor, Opus 50, No.4; Stravinsky: Three Pieces for String Quartet K019; and Beethoven’s String Quartet in F Major, Opus 59, No.1.

Expect “magic moments”, as The Strad once wrote of the quartet: This remarkable ensemble´s ability to live and breathe each phrase with an enraptured sensitivity proves revelatory.”  

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