Violinist returns to Tucson orchestra, quartet goes all Beethoven

In classical music, it's a violin.

Kentucky native and violinist Tessa Lark has shown us both personalities of the instrument in her past Tucson appearances:

• She was a little bit country/bluegrass in her 2019 Tucson Symphony Orchestra debut, when she performed Michael Torke’s bluegrass-inspired violin concerto "Sky." The piece was written for Lark and co-commissioned by the TSO and 10 other orchestras.  
• Three years later, she returned to join the lineup for the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music's 2022 Tucson Winter Chamber Music Festival.

Lark brings her classical music personality to the TSO this weekend to perform Samuel Barber's Violin Concerto. The work is a centerpiece of the orchestra's "Music From Carmen" concert at Linda Ronstadt Music Hall.

Lark has regularly performed the concerto, known for its lyrical musicality and demanding technical prowess, particularly in the perpetual motion finale, a four-minute, nonstop sprint that critics have described as "violent," "brutal" and "brooding."

"Music of Carmen," under the baton of guest conductor Joseph Young, opens with a pair of French composer Lili Boulanger's final works — "D’un matin de printemps" (On A Spring Morning) and "D’un soir triste" (On A Melancholy Evening) — composed between 1917 and early 1918.

"D’un matin de printemps" is a playful contrast to the funereal mood and darker tones of "D’un soir triste," which some musicologists suggest hints that Boulanger knew her lifelong illness was taking its toll; she died on March 15, 1918, at the age of 24.

Bizet's "Carmen" Suites 1 and 2 close out the concert.

Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $16.90-$109.30 through tucsonsymphony.org. 

Quartet is bringing on Beethoven

The Brentano String Quartet seems to be on a Beethoven kick this spring.

Nearly every concert they are doing in the coming months includes at least one work by the great German composer.

Beethoven closes their recital with Chamber Music Sedona on Sunday, March 22, days before they come to Tucson with the Arizona Friends of Chamber Music. They're playing the same program as Sedona's when they play the Wheaton College Artist Series in Illinois in mid-April. In between they're doing an all Haydn concert in San Francisco and a recital at Stanford that bookends a Bartók quartet with a pair of Beethoven quartets. 

But we get them at their Beethoven finest, a trio of Beethoven quartets — the E-flat Major "Harp," the F major and the C major “Rasumovsky" — in a program they also will play in Denver, Colorado, in early April.

Wednesday's concert with the quartet, which was formed in 1992 at Juilliard and has played around the globe since, begins at 7:30 p.m. at Leo Rich Theater, 260 S. Church Ave. Tickets are $45 for adults or $12 for students with ID, through arizonachambermusic.org.