As the Avalon Quartet is nearing the end of our two-year residency at The Juilliard School, now is a good time to look back at our experiences here. While violist Che-Yen Chen and cellist Sumire Kudo had been to Juilliard before, violinist Marie Wang and I had no idea what to expect at the School.

The Avalon String Quartet performing the Avalon concert at Alice Tully Hall in April 2002. Photo by Peter Schaaf

We came at a time when the chamber music program itself was growing, in large part because of the arrival of Bärli Nugent. Che-Yen says he finds the teaching aspect particularly rewarding: "I learned a lot from teaching and from the students themselves. I had little experience teaching before, and it brought a lot to me." Sumire enjoys the ability to focus on music: "The circumstances are ideal here; you can simply think about music and nothing else." Adds Marie, "The Juilliard Quartet is an inspiration, and so is the administration. People like Bärli, President Polisi, and Dean Clapp have been the most supportive group one could possibly have." We all enjoy very much our interaction with the string quartet survey class, which has changed greatly in the last year, allowing for more concentrated work. It is wonderful to see so much dedication to string quartet playing, often executed at a very high level. Maybe a whole new generation of string quartet ensembles is approaching!

We are learning a tremendous amount from the Juilliard Quartet, and have had the incredible opportunity to play the Mendelssohn Octet with them at the Library of Congress. We had a very different type of musical experience last month when we played in the undergraduate production of three Baroque operas by William Boyce, John Blow, and John Eccles, conducted by Ken Merrill from the keyboard. It was gorgeous music that is also rarely performed, a fascinating program that just shows the richness of the musical life here. We have made many friends in the School and we are sad the whole residency has to end!

The opportunity to perform a major recital in Alice Tully Hall each year, the Lisa Arnhold Memorial Concert, is a big highlight of the residency. This year's concert is on April 30, and I would like to comment on our choice of music for this event.

Lisa Arnhold Memorial Concert Alice Tully Hall Wednesday, April 30, 8 p.m. For ticket information, please see the calendar.

The program can be seen as an exploration of musical language--in particular, the way in which composers create new musical languages. We chose three works: Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet; Sun Threads by Augusta Read Thomas; and Beethoven's String Quartet, Op. 131. Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet was a turning point for the composer, and can be seen as an experiment in new stylistic possibilities. It was written in 1914, and the composer wrote the following: "In 1914 I knew none of Webern's music, and only Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire. But, while my pieces are maybe of a lesser substance, that they are more iterative than Schoenberg's music of the same date, they are as different and mark ... an important change in my art." While the first piece has ostinati reminiscent of The Rite of Spring, it uses them in a very mechanical, nearly serialist way. The second piece creates a completely new style, very atonal, with strange gestures inspired by the clown Little Tich. And the last piece is an introduction to the austere, nearly static, religious style Stravinsky would use later in his life. His language was already very shocking at the time, and yet he decided to push the limits further!

While we know Stravinsky was consciously looking for a new voice, it is impossible for us to know what Beethoven's exact goal was when writing the Opus 131. The romantic view is to see in it the language of a deaf genius left to listen to his inner voices. It was, of course, extremely difficult to comprehend this piece in its time. It was so different from the standard musical language, even though it borrowed elements from the entire course of music history and from many different genres--opera recitatives, fugues, etc. In its structure (but also in its writing), Opus 131 often anticipates the daring of the Second Viennese School, as well as the greatest composer of quartets in the 20th century, Bartók.

The new work on the program is by Augusta Read Thomas. While these earlier composers broke with the expectations of their times by striving for such radically different voices, it has nearly become the norm in contemporary works for composers to create a language of their own. We certainly feel Augusta is one of those contemporary composers who have found a unique voice. Her style has a lot of fantasy and freedom in it, and her music sounds almost improvised at times. This performance of Sun Threads will be a premiere, although the movements have been performed separately before (one of them, Fugitive Star, was written for us). She allowed us to give our input, and we had a hand in shaping the work with her. She describes her piece: "Sun Threads has passionate, urgent, seductive, and compelling qualities of something complex, but always logical thought, allied to sensuous and engaging sonic profiles."

Three pieces, three completely different styles, and yet there is a link: the desire to search further, to avoid convention and find a new voice.

Blaise Magnière is first violinist of the Avalon Quartet.