Cuarteto Latinoamericano, joined by pianist Sally Pinkas, will warm up the New Hampshire winter with Latin American music tonight at 8 p.m. in Spaulding Auditorium.
This world-renowned string quartet has brought music from their native countries to the same stage as Ravel and Schumann, and according to the Houston Newsweekly, "...they play with more fine precision and taste than most of their North American peers."
"The string quartet is a European form; we are playing European instruments; we're based on a European tonal system. But nevertheless, much of the content, or the inspiration for the content, comes form the New World," said Cuarteto cellist Alvaro Bitran.
Alvaro's brother and quartet first violinist, Saul Bitran, said that "all the music we play exemplifies [the] cultural interplay" between the New and the Old Worlds.
"Our countries are known for a variety of reasons, like food and beaches and vacation destinations, but people do not know very much about the culture. I feel that might be starting to change, and we are very happy about that -- to be part of those helping that paradigm shift that is starting to happen now," said Saul.
These two brothers joined their other brother Aron Bitran and violinist Javier Montiel in 1981 in Mexico City to form the quartet, then the only professional string ensemble in Mexico. Within two years the group received the Music Critics in Mexico co-prize, one of the nation's most prestigious musical honors.
Music and family life overlap even off stage for the quartet: all four are married to musicians and both of the brothers parents were amateur musicians. "Our mother was a piano teacher and we all began music studies as soon as we were old enough," Saul said. The young musicians were also encouraged by their father, who played the cello in their first string quartet.
The group has gone on to produce five CDs covering a range of music, most notably a recording of the complete string quartets of Villa-Lobos. Their repertoire is not restricted solely to Latin American composers, but even within this category they find a great variety of genres stemming from different European and native influences to perform. "But despite all the influences, there is a common uniting element in the music, and that is rhythm," Montiel said. "All Caribbean and South American countries rely heavily on strong rhythmical patterns in their folkloric music, and somehow that is also evident in the classical music output."
This evening the group will present selections from their new CD Musica de Feria of the work of Silvestre Revueltas. For the second half of the program, pianist Sally Pinkas, Dartmouth's artist-in-residence, will join the group for Schumann's Piano Quintet in E Flat, Op. 44. and the Divertimento for piano and quartet, by Gonzalo Castellanos Yumar.
"They're wonderful musicians," Pinkas said. "We're having a lot of fun."
Although Pinkas has only rehearsed with Cuarteto for the past week, she met them previously while working on her master's degree and said she feels comfortable playing with them.
"When you're not on the same wave length as [other musicians], sometimes you have to talk a lot, but with them ... we can just feel it," Pinkas said in an interview. She added that the group felt they could have given the concert Wednesday, after their first rehearsal.
The brothers also mentor young musicians as the quartet-in-residence at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and at the San Miguel de Allende Chamber Music Festival in Mexico. In addition, they commission a new work by a Latin American composer each year, and have visited elementary schools across the Southern U.S.
The group brings their talents to Hanover after having toured New York, Los Angeles, Paris and London.
