Beethoven: String Quartet No. 1
Janáček: String Quartet No. 2, “Intimate Letters”
Saad Haddad: String Quartet (world premiere)

Composer Saad Haddad, who will be in attendance for the event, describes his quartet as traversing “many areas of traditional Middle Eastern music, …and seeking to amalgamate those characteristics with traits typically found in Western classical music.” Haddad’s quartet is composed of three movements. The first, “Daf,” is named after the frame drum commonly used in traditional Middle Eastern ensembles, and features rhythmic pulses in a “seemingly improvised, though thoroughly composed, manner.” The Second, “Fugha,” imagines “what it might have been like if Bach was born in Alexandria, rather than Eisenach, and what harmonic discoveries… he might have made in pursuit of his perfect counterpoint.” The final movement, "Nashwa," or 'trance,' “is an aural meditation inspired by the contrast of swelling resonances from inside the oud, an Arab lute, and the surface, percussive sounds of the qanun, an Arab zither.”