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During these years we knew him, Henry often spoke of his close colleague and friend, Walter Levin, who had played first violin in the LaSalle for decades, and was now another major teacher of talented violinists and quartets in his own right. Many of our friends in other young quartets (like the Artemis, Casals and Kuss) were working with him extensively in Europe–but despite his reputation and our busy schedule our paths never crossed. We heard so much about Walter Levin, but in our 17 years playing concerts together around the world we never met him.

Until last Thursday!

We had heard that within the last year, Walter and his wife Evi had moved from Basel, Switzerland to Chicago, taking up residence near South Lakeshore Drive by lake Michigan in a lovely retirement community called Montgomery Place.

Since we were scheduled to perform in Chicago the following Friday night, we contacted Walter and Evi to see if they would like to meet with us–and they invited us to dinner at Montgomery Place! Over stir fry and pistachio cannoli, we shared reminiscences about our good friend Henry, and heard wonderful stories of the LaSalle’s travels in the 60s and 70s (who knew that they had played the Debussy Quartet for the Princess of Tonga in the rain on Fiji?). It was wonderful.

We were joined at dinner by pianist Anton Nel (who performed with us in Chicago). Anton had studied chamber music with Walter while he was a student at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

To top it off, Walter agreed to hear us play after dinner! In the activities room, in front of dozens of the retired professors, doctors and artists who live at Montgomery Place, the Miró Quartet played one of the most special performances of our lives! We chose Brahms first quartet in c minor to play, and I admit to personally being more than a bit nervous with such a quartet legend in front of us!

Walter had wonderfully insightful comments and observations about our playing–it’s clear a lifetime of music making is still very much at his fingertips, and his ears are razor sharp. By the end of an hour of working together, our interpretation had reached a new level and depth thanks to him. It was a momentous experience for us, and I hope for all the listeners watching the process as well.

Performing for Walter, Evi, and other residents of Montgomery Place.

Chamber music is in every way about connections and communication: between musicians onstage, between the musician and the audience, and even between a long dead composer and the next living generation of listeners in the 21st century. Although meeting for the first time, all four of us felt a deep connection to Walter Levin, not only because of his experience, artistry and wisdom, but also because of the deep love for Quartet music that he shared with our friend Henry Meyer, a love that Henry had himself so generously shared with us so long ago, at the very beginning of the Miró Quartet. Last Thursday we found a new friend and mentor, who marvelous seemed in so many ways to have been a part of our musical lives and hearts all along.

I’ll never forget that evening–hopefully the first of many more spent with Walter and Evi Levin! Perhaps next time we’ll play some Schoenberg or Beethoven…I can hardly wait!

Deepest Thanks to Walter and Evi…see you both again soon! ”

-John Largess

Eloquence doesn’t get much play in the age of the sound bite. We’re so wired for speed and informality that in most communication, a bluntness of expression holds sway. But in Bates Recital Hall last Friday, the Miró Quartet and pianist Anton Nel proved there are still places where thoughts are composed and conveyed with craft, where time is allowed for a range of feelings to be explored and for fine distinctions to be drawn.

In the first movement of Edward Elgar’s Quintet for Piano and Strings in A Minor, they alternated passages of dramatic conflict – a pursuit that escalated from the furtive shadowing of a stalker to a breathless chase, with the strings racing away from Nel’s relentless, commanding piano – with others of wistful nostalgia: the piano and strings joined in a dance of yearning, twirling about a history shared and lost. A beautifully layered tension within and between these sections caught the pull between past and present, action and reflection, and it was sustained through the subsequent sections as Elgar wound through melancholic musings, sweeping emotional declarations, delicate reveries, and movements charged with purpose and resolve. Throughout, all five musicians remained remarkably attuned to one another, each instrument shifting from background to foreground like quicksilver, keeping you constantly aware of all five and how they were interwoven into the fabric of the music.

This craftsmanship and care was no less evident when the Miró Quartet performed alone. Playing the Samuel Barber String Quartet‘s familiar “Adagio” – yes, that heartwrenching music from Platoon – the ensemble refused to milk the elegiac score for easy pathos; its restraint kept the work’s deeply felt grief honest, its emotion earned. Shifting from darkness to light with Antonín Dvoràk’s “American” String Quartet, the four indulged their romantic sides, coloring the optimistic and animated score with fervent flourishes. They also demonstrated a deep sense of unity, ending the contemplative “Lento” on a long note that exquisitely faded into silence and moving the “Molto vivace” forward with the even, steady propulsion of a mechanical engine. With second violin William Fedkenheuer still in his first year, the Miró may be still refining its sound. But this first concert of 2012 showed the ensemble’s voice to be considered, articulate, expressive, and nuanced – in short, eloquent.

Will Fedkenheuer welcomes the midafternoon jolt of caffeine that a cappuccino at Thrice Cafe brings him.

In November, Fedkenheuer and his wife welcomed their second son, Oliver. Between their newborn and their 23-month-old son, Max, sleep is in short supply for Fedkenheuer and his wife.

Happiness is not, though.

Fedkenheuer is the second violinist of the Miró Quartet.

“There’s so much fun in what we get to do,” he says, genuinely relaxed and cheerful.

The Miró plays Friday night at Bates Recital Hall in a program that includes a guest appearance by pianist Anton Nel.

It’s just the fourth time Austin audiences will have had the chance to see Fedkenheuer. He joined the Miró — which has been the string quartet-in-residence at the University of Texas’ Butler School of Music since 2003 — in August.

Fedkenheuer stepped into the position once occupied by Sandra Yamamoto, who left to have more time with her family. (Yamamoto is the wife of Miró Quartet first violinist Daniel Ching, and the couple has two sons.)

The now high-profile internationally touring quartet was formed in 1995 when its members were undergraduates at Oberlin Conservatory.

Fedkenheuer is the first new member to the Miró since its beginnings. (The quartet also includes violist John Largess and cellist Josh Gindele.)

Is it daunting, joining such an ensemble, one that’s been together for so long?

“They took a great deal of care in the audition process and were very thoughtful,” says Fedkenheuer. “There’s a learning curve for all of us. Everything is new to everyone.”

Though everyone is not necessarily new to everyone else.

In the small world of high-caliber string quartet players, Fedkenheuer and the Miró have known each other for years, literally. As teenagers, he and Ching even spent a summer at music camp in Maine. (Fedkenheuer mentioned something about a dorm-damaging water fight he and Ching were involved with, but didn’t elaborate.)

“It’s important to take an interest in what’s going on in their lives,” says Fedkenheuer of his fellow string players. “And you have to know how to integrate life outside the quartet with (life in it). It does take a lot of patience and maturity.”

Group happiness, for example, depends entirely on each individual’s happiness.

“It’s a democracy that doesn’t always follow all the rules of a democracy,” Fedkenheuer says of quartet dynamics. “If one person is really unhappy with something, then we’ll change it. I have a say in how my voice sounds in the quartet.”

Fedkenheuer hadn’t been looking for a change when the Miró came calling late last spring. He was content as the first violinist of the Fry Street Quartet and on the faculty of the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University. After all, the fly-fishing — a favorite pastime of Fedkenheuer’s — was great in the mountains of Utah.

But Texas wasn’t exactly the unknown frontier, either. After growing up in Calgary — with its petroleum industry and cowboy culture, Alberta is often called the “Texas of Canada” — Fedkenheuer studied at Rice University in Houston for his undergraduate degree.

At his Austin debut concert with the Miró in September, Fedkenheuer surprised with some Texas-esque (Alberta-esque?) talent when he broke into “Orange Blossom Special,” aka the fiddler’s anthem.

Yep, Fedkenheuer is a fiddler. At least, he started his career as such.

Learning violin at age 4 by the Suzuki method, he was by age 7 plucked to join the Calgary Fiddlers, a professional youth touring group.

“The first concert I was invited to play on was at Disneyland,” he recalls. “That kind of sealed the deal for me.”

For the next seven years, Fedkenheuer toured the world with the Calgary Fiddlers, racking up a considerable amount of show business chops along way.

Though professionally it’s all about the classical repertoire for him now, Fedkenheuer says the fiddling is never all that far away. “It’s something I’ll often pull out on my own.”

Among other projects on the docket for the Miró is a mid-May recording of Beethoven’s Op. 59 quartets. The CD will be released in the fall, a prelude, as it were, for the foursome’s plans to tackle the entire cycle of Beethoven string quartets in the 2013-2014 season.

“The Beethoven cycle is really kind of rite of passage for a string quartet,” says Fedkenheuer. “And we really wanted to focus on the core repertoire.”

In the meantime, in June there’s a gig at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall with Yo-Yo Ma and the New York Philharmonic. And next year, the Miró plays Carnegie Hall. Before that, among many other projects, the quartet will premiere at UT an octet with the Shanghai Quartet by Austin composer Dan Welcher. Then there’s a concert at the Library of Congress for which the quartet will use Stradivarius instruments from the library’s collection.

“It’s all good,” says Fedkenheuer of the hectic professional schedule.

Perhaps the midafternoon caffeine break will become standard repertoire, too.

Josh with former mentors from the Cavani Quartet, Annie Fullard (middle), Mari Sato (right)

Daniel with the Nicest Guy in Classical Music, Peter Salaff, second violinist of the legendary Cleveland Quartet.

John with Cleveland Orchestra Principal Clarinetist and an old friend, Franklin Cohen.

The quartet enjoys a blast from the blast: sour cream donuts from Presti’s!  The donuts were courtesy of the Queen of Hospitality in Cleveland, Lois Rose.  Thank you Lois!

Will with Ashley Faulx, doctor at the Cleveland Clinic’s Case Medical Center, friend of Will’s from Harrisburg, PA.

Josh with his parents, who drove all the way from Pittsburgh just to see their son perform on the cello.  What great parents!

The Cleveland Chamber Music Society goes out its way to make sure that chamber music is alive and well in Northeast Ohio. It imports many of the finest artists in the field and reveals the wonders of the art to local children.

The society’s concert Tuesday at Plymouth Church in Shaker Heights neatly summarized its mission. The night began with a salute to Annie Fullard, a faculty member at the Cleveland Institute of Music and first violinist of the Cavani String Quartet, who was honored for her work as artistic director of the society’s School Outreach Program.

Then it was time for music played on a lofty level. The guest ensemble was the Miro Quartet, which was founded at Oberlin College in 1995 and now serves as string quartet-in-residence at the University of Texas at Austin.

Throughout the concert, the Miro gave lessons in the art of the string quartet, shaping each of the night’s scores with a blend of refinement and vibrancy that drew the listener deeply inside the sonic arguments.

What a remarkable ensemble the Miro is. First violinist Daniel Ching is an artist of prodigious gifts who treats every musical moment as a crucial event. His expressive subtlety and fire are matched by second violinist William Fedkenheuer (the newest member), violist John Largess and cellist Joshua Gindele.

Their exceptional interaction benefited the varied demands of the program’s repertoire, which was almost a history of the string quartet. The night began with the so-called father of the genre, Haydn, whose String Quartet in E-flat major, Op. 33, No. 2, is subtitled “The Joke.”

The punchline doesn’t arrive until the finale, when the music often stops dead in its tracks and takes a big breath before moving on. Prior to this mirth, Haydn is his usual warm-hearted and engaging self, with genial and surprising turns of phrase and harmony that give way to darker implications.

Violist Largess prepared the audience for Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 5 with remarks that suggested the 1991 score is a challenging experience. But the piece, touched by Glass’ trademark minimalist style, unfolds with intriguing and even poignant approachability.

Accessible doesn’t mean simple, and the Miro players were quick to emphasize the tensions in the repeated figures and contemplative writing. They shaped the swirling rhythmic motives as vividly as they kept the narrative in forward motion.

Brahms’ String Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1, is an opportunity for an ensemble to go to Romantic excess, but the Miro avoided the temptation. Instead, the musicians placed the score’s warmth and vigor in the most lucid contexts.

As if these stellar performances weren’t enough, the Miro bade farewell with a transcendent encore, the Cavatina from Beethoven’s Quartet in B-flat major, Op. 130, which received tender, luminous shading.

To read the review in its entirety, please click here.

Perhaps it’s a testament to the energy of their performances that concert promoters and critics still like to tag the Austin, Texas-based Miró Quartet as an “emerging young ensemble.”

The group has been active since 1995, and it has had the same membership for most of that period (its fees have gone up, one would assume). The quartet recently experienced its first personnel change since 1997, as second violinist Sandy Yamamoto left in order to spend more time with her two young children, and William Fedkenheuer, a former member of the Borromeo String Quartet, was hired in July after a nine-month search.

The members of the foursome – who also include violinist Daniel Ching, violist John Largess and cellist Joshua Gindele – are in their 30s. By the standards of classical music, that is young. But Gindele notes that there’s nothing like late Beethoven to make a string player ponder age.

“I don’t know why – maybe it’s just because I’m getting grayer. I find more sadness and less anxiety in the work,” said Gindele, after a performance of the first movement of Beethoven’s Quartet Op. 132 in the WQXR Café. “With the first movement I used to have the idea that it was a little bit anxious and there was a constant tension. Now I feel like it’s a little more settled and a little more back in its chair and a little more espressivo instead of driven.”

Gindele adds that Beethoven himself “was definitely facing his own mortality at this point. He had a horrible intestinal illness that he did not think he was going to recover from.”

The other members of the Miró agree that the Op. 132 carries a certain weight of time. “All these late quartets are truly autobiographical but in some ways this one has more of a personal message,” said Ching. “I feel like Op. 132 is really driven by something emotional – by what he felt like he had to get out.”

Beethoven composed the work in 1825, as his own deafness had thoroughly advanced two years before his death. Some credit this quartet as T. S. Eliot’s impetus to write his poem cycle Four Quartets. In a letter, the author envisioned the piece as “the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering,” adding, “I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.”

This week at Lincoln Center, the Miró performs Op. 132 preceded by a 75-minute dramatic recitation of Four Quartets by the English actor Stephen Dillane, done from memory. Fedkenheuer, the new violinist, is unable to attend the performances due to a family obligation and violinist Tereza Stanislav is filling in. Nevertheless, the quartet is familiar with the production, having performed it at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in 2009. “It’s easier to grasp a long, complicated, somewhat heavy poem when you both have something non-verbal afterwards,” said Largess.

Click here to watch a video from the performance.

We are so excited to be welcoming acclaimed violinist and chamber musician, William Fedkenheuer to the Miró Quartet as our new second violinist! Will will begin touring extensively with the Miró Quartet beginning this fall. Will is the perfect fit for the group, both musically and personally, and we couldn’t be happier with this appointment!

It’s time to look at the Miro Quartet in a new light. The departure of Sandy Yamamoto as second violinist is a natural point of transition for the ensemble, but as they opened the Austin Chamber Music Festival on Friday night at the Bates Recital Hall, the Miro seemed transformed — sort of basking in the glow of music that resonated deep in their bones.

Cellist Joshua Gindele hardly gave his score a glance all night, preferring instead to meet eyes with the rest of the ensemble, urging them on with his shoulders or a tilt of his head.

First violin Daniel Ching was basically on fire. High vibratos were heartbreaking, and delicate harmonics were like glass.

Composer Kevin Puts’ “Credo” was commissioned for the Miro in 2007, when they sought a work that would emphasize something positive about America during that difficult era.

Puts’ music brings a violin shop to life, paints a picture of America’s buildings and bridges, and recalls the beliefs and hopes that formed the backbone of this nation.

Its opening chord was achingly beautiful. As the quartet inhabited a luthier’s shop, it was exactly the sound you’d imagine from roomful of violins, could they speak.

Next was Michael Torke’s “Mojave,” with Tom Burritt on marimba. It didn’t seem to swing as it had earlier this year, but this homage to the desert was still entrancing.

In an evening of superlative performances, Philip Glass’ “String Quartet No. 5” was the masterstroke.

The 1991 work defies Glass’ reputation as a repetitive, and as minimalist, for that matter. With its ever present pulse, it groups little thoughts on top of hypnotically pretty passages, then releases, with heart-stopping chords, pulled out in great unified strokes by the Miro.

Ching, again, played several gorgeous solos. But the Miro as a whole had a determined charisma in their movements, pushing each other forward.

This was the Miro at the top of their form. Tereza Stanislav filled in nicely at second violin, as the Miro continues to search for its new member.

In the meantime, the ensemble revels in this carefree confidence that is breathing new life into their work, and inducing ever more chills in concertgoers.

Luke Quinton is an American-Statesman freelance arts critic.

To read the review in its entirety, please click here.