Strings and Hammers

Some of the most enduring music in the repertoire was born not from ambition, but from rediscovery. In the summer of 1893, Antonín Dvorak traded New York’s noise for the quiet rhythms of Spillville, Iowa – a small Czech community surrounded by open fields and songbirds. There, he found rest and inspiration, and the spark that led to one of his most beloved works: the American Quartet.

This episode of Arizona Encore brings together chamber music for strings and piano – instruments that perfectly complement one another. The Lysander Piano Trio opens the program from the Hayden’s Ferry Chamber Music Series at Tempe Center for the Arts, performing Haydn’s Piano Trio in E-flat and Joaquín Turina’s vividly colored Círculo, a musical journey from dawn to dusk. Pianist Martin James Bartlett follows with solo works by Rachmaninoff and Ravel, recorded at the same venue, before the Dover Quartet closes the broadcast from Leo Rich Theater in Tucson with Dvorak’s radiant String Quartet No. 12 in F Major, “American.”