Exploring friendship, love and dialogue, this program features two brand-new commissions. The first, The Unspoken Eight, is the result of a wordless “letter-writing project” in which Melody Eötvös and Rishin Singh responded to one another through music alone. Natalie Nicolas’s By the Tide of the Moon captures the meditative joy of ocean swimming, while Borodin’s Second Quartet – a loving portrayal of his wife – and Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue round out a concert rich in intimacy, imagination and the expressive power of the string quartet.

Limelight Editor’s Choice

“Mendelssohn famously said, “It’s not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise…”. We’ve always loved this quote and decided to explore this idea and pair two composers, Melody Eötvös and Rishin Singh, living on opposite sides of the world in a musical letter writing project.

By the Tide of the Moon captures the strength and beauty of Aida Tuciute, a Lithuanian Olympic swimmer with a love of ocean swimming; while Borodin’s second quartet depicts the love of his wife and their first three glorious months of marriage spent in Heidelberg. The themes of love, letter writing, and communication through music are counterbalanced with the crystalline brilliance of Mozart’s Adagio and Fugue in C minor, which celebrates the sheer joy of music for music’s sake alone.”

~ Zoe Knighton, cello