Quartet plays its namesake’s music

Notable string ensemble named after composer Karol Szymanowski

One of Europe’s foremost string quartets is named for Poland’s foremost composer of the early 20th century. The ensemble is the Szymanowski String Quartet. The composer is Karol Szymanowski.

So it’s only natural that the ensemble enjoys playing its namesake’s compositions. In a Feb. 8 Santa Fe Pro Musica concert in St. Francis Auditorium, the quartet will play Szymanowski’s Nocturne and Tarantella.

“He wrote only two string quartets but we play three,” cellist Marcin Sieniawski said half-jokingly in a phone interview.

The Nocturne and Tarantella, Sieniawski said, was written for violin with piano accompaniment. A friend of the quartet arranged the work for the ensemble.

“And of course we refined it. … The first violin part is unchanged and all around it are the other three instruments,” Sieniawski said.

“This piece has Italian and Spanish accents but Szymanowski was always trying to make it sound like his. His obsession was the sounds in the night.

“The Nocturne is his impressions of the night. The Tarantella is folky,” he added.

Also on the program are works by W.A. Mozart, Antonin Dvorak and Franz Joseph Haydn. The Haydn is his String Quartet No. 30 (“The Joke”).

“Haydn is famous for his beginnings the structure, the volume, the very strange ideas. But this is about the ending,” with its several silent pauses, Sieniawski said. “People don’t know what to do. Applaud or not. Again and again.”

The ensemble will play Dvorak’s String Quartet No. 14. It possesses a quality of singing and dancing, which he said generally applies to the composer’s music.

Mozart’s Divertimento in F major has very funny motifs that should catch the listener’s attention, Sieniawski said.

The other members of the quartet are violist Vladimir Kykytka and violinists Agata Szymczewska and Grzegorz Kotow.

“Agata is a gorgeous Polish violinist. This is our first U.S. tour with her,” Sieniawski said.

Szymczewska just finished playing with the Anna-Sophie Mutter’s Mutter Virtuosi.