Zoellner String Quartet Project Focus of Hyde Hall Event

By CASPAR EWIG
SPRINGFIELD

A unique presentation consisting of a concert and lecture will be presented at Hyde Hall on Sunday, September 10 at 7 p.m.

The event, titled “Zoellner String Quartet Project with Lady Alexandra Foley Performed by Musicians of Ma’alwyck,” will resurrect pieces by composers who were well established early last century, but are now relatively obscure. As such, they were a part of the repertoire of the Zoellner Quartet, a string quartet composed of a father and his children who toured throughout the United States and Canada in the 1920s.

The music will be performed by members and guest artists of the Musicians of Ma’alwyck. That group is a flexible-size chamber ensemble in residence at the Schuyler Mansion New York State Historic Site and Schenectady County Community College. It was founded in 1999 and specializes in music performed in America during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The ensemble will consist of two violins, a viola and a cello, thus replicating the original Zoellner Quartet. The lecture on the history, background and musical importance of the Zoellner Quartet will be presented by The Honourable Alexandra Foley, the great granddaughter of Joseph Zoellner Sr., who founded the quartet in 1903. Foley has written a book, edited by Ann-Marie Barker Schwartz of Ma’alwyck, memorializing the quartet, and that work is scheduled for publication later this year.

The Zoellner Quartet, comprised of Joseph Zoellner Sr. and his children, Antoinette, Amandus, and Joseph Jr., originated in Brooklyn in 1903, and shortly thereafter moved to California. Three years later the group went to Belgium under the sponsorship of Ethel Crocker, a member of the wealthy Californian banker family. They then spent the next six years touring Belgium, France, Germany and Russia, earning their reputation as a highly respected classical string quartet. In 1912, they returned to the United States and undertook a breathtaking and uninterrupted performance circuit that continued until their retirement in 1925. It is estimated that during that time they played more than 2,500 concerts in all corners of the U.S. and Canada.

The trailblazing Zoellner Quartet was known and celebrated for not only reinvigorating the interest in classical music but also for displaying what one writer described as a musical catholicity, in that they simultaneously played the works of contemporary composers with contemporary themes. Thus, the group often mixed Mozart and Beethoven with Frank Bridge, Charles Sanford Skilton and Alfred Hill. And if the latter names are unfamiliar, attendance at the Hyde Hall production will introduce them.

“It’s a shame that the Zoellner Quartet has been forgotten over the years,” said Foley. “When I learned that a trove of archival material documenting their amazing career existed at UCLA, I was impelled to spend three days there before the pandemic struck. Back in London and locked down, I decided to sit down and write the ‘The Lost Quartet.’”

“The stories and photographs from the archive at UCLA and my late mothers’ recollections in my book form the substance of the presentation I shall be giving to bring some life to the quartet at the time of the concert,” Foley continued.

The musical program for the evening will consist of selections by the “contemporaneous” composers Frank Bridge, whose “Novelletten” has been described as a wonderful example of atmospheric tone painting, and violinist-composer Alfred Hill, an Australian whose piece will reflect native themes. Works by Christian Sinding, Dutch composer Jan Brandts Buys, Leone Sinigaglia and Charles Sanford Skilton will round out the program. A more comprehensive description of the works and their composers will be part of the program notes.

“We are pleased to return to Hyde Hall to present this concert,” said Schwartz, the founder and director of Musicians of Ma’alwyck.

The Ma’alwyck ensemble, which has won numerous accolades, is well known in the Capital Region and at Hyde Hall. For this performance, in addition to member violist André Laurent O’Neil, the ensemble will be augmented by guest artists violinist Fritz Krakowski and violist/cellist Katrina Smith.

The entrance to Hyde Hall is at 267 Glimmerglass State Park Road, Cooperstown. For more information, visit https://hydehall.org/.