Pacifica Quartet and Friends

In a unique mix of compositional styles, the Allerton Music Barn Festival will present three works spanning the 19th and 21st centuries, including a world-premier performance of the Festival's first commissioned work.

Dmitry Shostakovich — String Quartet
No. 7, Opus 108

A tribute to his first wife, Nina, Shostakovich's seventh quartet was composed in 1960. In this quartet, Shostakovich takes the listener on a musical journey that includes mockery, irony, and the grotesque. Like other composers since the Baroque era, Shostakovich uses a fugue in the finale to intensify "a single melodic fragment in dense overlapping simultaneity" that expresses "manic force, complexity, and calculated chaos." Overall, his seventh quartet embodies panic, terror, and rage through the use of recurring counterpoint.

Reynold Tharp — Anima Liberata

University of Illinois composer Reynold Tharp will premiere his new work, Anima Liberata, commissioned expressly for the Allerton Music Barn Festival. Tharp's piece for soprano, cello, and piano reflects his fascination with transitory physical aspects of sound such as resonance and decay. His compositional style is a perfect match for the ethereal libretto of Joy Pierce Mathews's Latin contemplations of life.

Ernst Chausson — Concert, Opus 21

Composed between 1889 and 1891, Ernst Chausson's neoclassic work, Concert, Opus 21 for Violin, Piano, and String Quartet, is recognized for its intense lyricism, many modulations, and pathos. Cyclical in format, the piece is considered one of the composer's most significant compositions because of its accessibility and beauty. It is among the best examples of his oeuvre, and depicts the French classical style Chausson favored in Couperin and Rameau.