Athens, Ga. – The University of Georgia Performing Arts Center will present the Kopelman Quartet Oct. 7 at 3 p.m. in the Hugh Hodgson Concert Hall. The performance is the 2012 Payne Memorial Concert of the Franklin College Chamber Music Series, which is named in honor of William Jackson Payne, the former dean of Franklin College who founded the Chamber Music Series. Admission to the concert is free; however, tickets are required.
The Kopelman Quartet was formed a decade ago by a group of musicians who graduated from the Moscow Conservatory in the 1970s. The ensemble takes its name from founding member and first violinist Mikhail Kopelman, who was the highly respected leader of the Borodin Quartet for 20 years and first violinist of the Tokyo String Quartet for seven years.
The common roots and background of the musicians enabled the Kopelman Quartet to grow quickly to maturity, and their Edinburgh Festival concert, just one year after their founding, received glowing reviews from the international press. BBC Music Magazine praised the quartet as “another fine link with the great Russian tradition.”
Now established as a significant chamber ensemble, the quartet plays at major international venues, including the Musikverein in Vienna, the Dom Muziki in Moscow, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam and Wigmore Hall in London. In addition, the group regularly appears at such music festivals as the Zurich Festival, the Prague Spring Festival and the Ravinia Festival in the U.S.
Members of the Kopelman Quartet include violinists Kopelman and Oleg Sulyga, violist Igor Sulyga and cellist Mikhail Milman, along with guest pianist Elizaveta Kopelman, Kopelman’s daughter. The program is scheduled to include Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No. 2 in F Major, Krzysztof Penderecki’s String Quartet No. 3 and César Franck’s Piano Quintet in F Minor.
The Performing Arts Center is sponsoring an educational residency in conjunction with the Kopelman Quartet’s concert. Members of the ensemble will be in residence Oct. 3-6 to work with students at UGA’s Hugh Hodgson School of Music. The residency has been made possible by a grant from UGA’s Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
For ticket information, see http://pac.uga.edu/ or call the box office at 706/542-4400 or toll free at 888/289-8497.
Lawrence and Mary Hepburn are the underwriters for the performance.
