WQXR "Trout Week": Ebène Quartet at the Greene Space
The New York Times, April 7, 2011

Between musical selections midway through this show, host Bill McGlaughlin asked the members of the Ebène Quartet how many concerts they present in a typical year. Around 120 was the response.

After a few more tunes – "Misirlou," "Libertango," the Beatles' "Come Together" – McGlaughlin inquired about the quartet's current U.S. tour, which brings the group to Weill Recital Hall for a nearly sold-out concert on Friday, April 8.

"18 days, 15 concerts," one member said. (I didn't catch which one.) "And about 25 planes," another added. General murmurs of disbelief and admiration could be heard among audience members. "Don't wear yourselves out," McGlaughlin advised the young musicians.

Mathieu Herzog, the Ebène's consistently droll violist, shrugged off concern. "We play classical music during this tour," he offered, reassuringly.

True: the group's repertoire at Weill will include Mozart's "Dissonance" Quartet, Bartók's Third Quartet and Mendelssohn's Quartet in F minor. But if you've heard the kind of intensity the Ebène Quartet brings to the standard repertoire, you know that Herzog's brush-off actually provided no reassurance at all. If you haven't, here's a bit of Beethoven, filmed at last year's Verbier Festival, to get you caught up.

Playlist

Roareth – Acts I-VI (Maple Forum)

King Crimson – Sun Plaza Hall, Sendai, Japan, Oct. 13, 1995 (DGMLive)

Benny Golson – Benny Golson's New York Scene (Fantasy)

Darius Jones/Matthew Shipp – Cosmic Lieder (AUM Fidelity; due Apr. 12)

Becca Stevens Band – Weightless (Sunnyside; due Apr. 19)

Black Sabbath – Los Angeles 1994 (Live Storm bootleg)

Various Artists – XXL 2011 Freshman Class: The Mixtape (XXL)

Furthur – Live at Radio City Music Hall, Mar. 26, 2011 (self-released)

Kyle Bobby Dunn – Ways of Meaning (Desire Path; due in May)

Shinji Masuko – Woven Music (Brah; due Apr. 26)

Dave Douglas – Charms of the Night Sky (Winter & Winter)

Cecil Taylor – Dark to Themselves (Enja)

C.P.E. Bach – Six Harpsichord Concertos – Andreas Staier, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra/Petra Müllejans (Harmonia Mundi; due Apr. 12)

Sleep – Sleep's Holy Mountain (Earache)

Agogic – Agogic (Tables & Chairs)

Modern Jazz Quartet – The Complete Last Concert (Atlantic)

Van der Graaf Generator – A Grounding in Numbers (Esoteric)

Anaal Nathrakh – Passion (Candlelight; due May 17)

Kambar Kalendarov & Kutman Sultanbekov – Cut (Cantaloupe)

Leb Laze – Music for Troubled Machinery (Asthmatic Kitty)

NOW Ensemble – Awake (New Amsterdam; due Apr. 26)

ProjeKct Four – Fox Theatre, Boulder, CO, Oct. 24, 1998 (DGMLive)

Andy Akiho – No One to Know One (Innova)

Paul Elwood – Stanley Kubrick's Mountain Home (Innova)

John Luther Adams – Four Thousand Holes; …and bells remembered… – Stephen Drury, Scott Deal, Callithumpian Consort (Cold Blue)

Anthony Braxton – Three Orchestras (GTM) 1998 (New Braxton House)

Donnacha Dennehy – Grá agus Bás; That the Night Come – Iarla O’Lionáird, Dawn Upshaw, Crash Ensemble/Alan Pierson (Nonesuch; due May 3)