For the third concert of its Ruby Anniversary Season, Redwood Arts Council brings a vibrant young string quartet based in Vienna to the Community Church of Sebastopol on Saturday, November 9 at 7:30. Their program includes Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in g-minor, Op.74/3 (The Rider" Hob.III:74), Alban Berg‘s String Quartet Op.3, and Johannes Brahms’ String Quartet Op.51/2, in a-minor.
Since being nominated for the “Rising Stars” award by the European Concert Hall Organization in 2008/09, the Minetti Quartett, comprising Austrian musicians all living in Vienna, has performed in renowned venues in Vienna, Berlin, Cologne, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Stockholm, Brussels, London and other locations. Invitations to chamber music festivals have taken the quartet to North, Central and South America, Australia, Japan and China. Since 2009 Hänssler Classic has released four highly acclaimed CD recordings (Haydn, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Schubert) by the ensemble. For its fifteenth anniversary the Minetti Quartett was invited to start their own cycle of concerts at Vienna’s newest venue, the MuTh concert hall in the city’s Augarten.
The Minetti Quartett is a winner of many international chamber music competitions (Schubert Competition, Haydn Competition) and was awarded Austria’s Grosser Gradus ad Parnassum Prize, the start-up grant of the Austrian federal ministry and the Karajan Grant. Its name derives from a play by the dramatist Thomas Bernhard, who lived in Ohlsdorf in Austria’s Salzkammergut region, where the two violinists of the quartet grew up.
Johannes Meissl and the musicians of the Alban Berg Quartett were the Minetti Quartett’s teachers at the Music University in Vienna. In turn, the quartet has now undertaken teaching projects in Finland, Mexico, Spain, Sweden and at American and Austrian universities (Mozarteum Salzburg, Music University of Graz). The Austrian National Bank has placed two violins by G. B. Guadagnini (Mantegazza of 1774 and ex Meinel of 1770-1775) and a cello by G. Tononi (Bologna, 1681) on loan to the quartet. Milan Milojicic plays a viola by Bernd Hiller (2009).