Alcan String Quartet's only Nova Scotia appearance set for Yarmouth Aug. 5

The Alcan Quartet, one of Canada’s most outstanding classical music ensembles, will perform in Yarmouth on Wednesday, Aug. 5, at Holy Trinity Church on William Street. It is the quartet’s only Nova Scotia performance during this summer music festival season.

Since the quartet formed in 1989, the ensemble has become the most recorded quartet in Canada with around 100 live radio broadcasts (Radio Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, National Public Radio in the USA, and Radio France); more than 1000 concerts; numerous television appearances; tours throughout North America, Europe, Asia; and commissioned pieces and first performances.

Critics say, “both on stage and in the recording studio, the Alcan Quartet has developed the qualities that characterize the best ensembles: a recognizable personality, a homogeneous sound, and an elegant style.” Words like dazzling, seductive, sublime, virtuosity, superb mastery and exceptional sonority, pepper reviews from critics around the world.

One of the quartet’s founding members, cellist David Ellis says the quartet is planning a special festival program he calls Meilleurs Moments. Loosely translated it means the best moments of the Alcan Quartet. “Instead of playing a traditional quartet program, where there is maybe a Haydn quartet, and then another quartet and then a third quartet in the second half, what we are going to be doing is perhaps the first movement of a quartet, talk to people and let them know why we are doing it. Then we will go into another piece in a totally contrasting style. People will get to hear stuff from the standard classical repertoire and at the same time they are going to hear some works, that we’re the only ones playing. But it’s great music and they are going to love it.”

Included in the program will be works by well-known composers like Beethoven, Dvorak, Debussy and Haydn as well as lesser known works by Italian, Canadian and Russian composers.

The idea that became the quartet began more than 20 years ago when a regional orchestra based in Chicoutimi, Quebec, Orchestre Symphonique Saguenay-Lac Saint Jean, sought sponsorship from mining giant Alcan Aluminum Ltd. ( Now Brazil-based Rio Tinto Alcan.) The company agreed and gave them the choice of spending the money on hiring a soloist for one or two concerts a year or taking the same amount of money and employing four professional musicians in the orchestra. “It was hard to get people to come to this region because it was, maybe like Yarmouth, a little bit out of the way,” said Ellis of the orchestra’s early efforts.

Enter Ellis, an American cellist from Vermont. “When I heard about this position, I encouraged them to offer it as a string quartet in residence position,” he recalled. “That’s how the project really took off and we have continued to keep that the priority. Our main purpose in life is the string quartet. It has priority over everything.”

In addition to performing, the quartet is regularly asked to teach and give master classes at universities, conservatories, and summer camps. The Alcan Quartet has been quartet-in-residence at the Université de Montréal since 1997. The quartet’s discography includes major works from the string quartet repertoire including Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Dvorak, Debussy, Borodin, and others. The quartet won the “Prix Opus, recording of the year” for its CD of Schubert Quartets.

But despite the group’s work in the recording studio Ellis says nothing touches the experience of live performance. “I am much more satisfied in performing live concerts than in recording. For the people in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia maybe this will be the only time they will ever hear the quartet perform live … so there is all this history and all this experience and all these years of work and all of it will culminate in Yarmouth for one night.”

The Alcan Quartet’s concert in Yarmouth is being presented by the Hear Here Society, with support from the Town of Yarmouth and Yarmouth MLA Richard Hurlburt. Hear Here’s summer festival series will conclude on Monday, Sept. 14 with a concert at the Yarmouth County Museum featuring Canadian soprano Suzie LeBlanc in concert with pianist Robert Kortgaard and clarinetist Mark Simons.

The Alcan String Quartet concert begins at 7 p.m.

Tickets for the concert are available at the door.