2021 STring Quartet Masterclass

On May 23, 2021, we finally returned to live performance in front of an audience, and three days later we were back in the beautiful and spacious  Laurel Heights United Methodist Church’s sanctuary for our annual free master class for area students. Our 2020 masterclass had to be conducted online (read about that here), so we were so pleased that COVID conditions had improved enough to allow us to bring students back for a live class. Audience was limited to family members and the class was recorded and released on our YouTube channel a few days later. This year’s class was made possible by a gift from the San Antonio Symphony League in support of our education programs. 

Getting ensembles together to rehearse in 20-21 was … challenging… so we opened the class up to solo performers and ended up with a small but very  interesting program,  opening with cellist Simon Phoa performing Paganini’s Caprice No. 24. Simon is an alum of Ken Freudigman’s cello studio (Ken is our cellist and Artistic Director) and also of our String Quartet Seminar and is now studying cello at Southern Methodist University. Our violinists Matthew Zerweck and Anastasia Parker took point with Simon, discussing larger musical points and challenges of performing the Paganini Caprices in particular and also adjusting technical choices to accommodate the performance space. 

Second was a very talented young quartet which worked together much of this year with Matthew, preparing for quartet competitions. Adriana Bec, Viviana Peters, Ray Zhang and Vincent Garcia-Hettinger performed the first movement of Shostakovich’s Third String Quartet. Our entire quartet worked with them on unifying across the group and controlling/focusing energy. 

With  continued vigilance, we are looking forward to more concerts with live audiences in 21-22, and more live master classes, too!