This season the San Francisco performances of the subscription concerts offered by the Ives Quartet (violinists Bettina Mussumeli and Susan Freier, violist Jodi Levitz, and cellist Stephen Harrison) are taking place at Old First Church as part of the Old First Concerts series. That season began yesterday afternoon with a program entitled From Opera to Quartet. The program featured string quartets by two of this year’s “anniversary composers” of opera, the only mature purely instrumental work by Giuseppe Verdi (whose 200th birthday was celebrated last month on both October 9 and October 10 to account for any uncertainty), a four-movement string quartet in E minor composed in 1873, and the...
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