Jupiter Quartet Returns to Krannert for 2024-25 Season

Hailed by The New Yorker as “an ensemble of eloquent intensity [that] has matured into one of the mainstays of the American chamber-music scene,” the Jupiter Quartet returns to the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts on November 12. We sat down with violist Liz Freivogel and cellist Daniel McDonough to discuss their upcoming season as the University of Illinois’ Quartet-in-Residence.

The Jupiter Quartet—so-called because Jupiter was the most prominent planet in the night sky at the time of the group’s formation in 2001, and the astrological symbol for Jupiter resembles the number four—is a particularly tight-knit ensemble. Composed of violinists Nelson Lee and Meg Freivogel, violist Liz Freivogel (Meg’s older sister), and cellist Daniel McDonough (Meg’s husband, Liz’s brother-in-law), the group has been bound by familial and musical ties for over 20 years.

While quartets made up of related or married members are not entirely uncommon, Liz Freivogel thinks these familial bonds have contributed to the Jupiter Quartet's success and longevity. “I think we do have such a deep connection between us,” she said. “At this point, there aren’t too many quartets that have had the same four members for as long as we have and are still playing. So, I think that gives our playing just a level of connection that’s special.” When you know each other so well, “it can kind of free you up as a player,” she added, because “you know they’re going to be right with you.”

Based in Urbana, Illinois, the Jupiter Quartet gives concerts across the country and has performed at some of the world’s most prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York City, Wigmore Hall in London, and the Kennedy Center and Library of Congress in Washington, DC. As the Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Illinois' School of Music since 2012, they maintain private studios, direct the chamber music program, and perform a series of concerts at Krannert every season. Their first performance of the 2024–25 season will take place on Tuesday, November 12 with an emotionally diverse program of Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 11 in F Minor, Op. 95; Kati Agócs’s Imprimatur; and Franz Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15 in G Major, D. 887.

“The whole program deals with extremes of light and darkness,” Freivogel explained. Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 11, nicknamed “Serioso,” is the last string quartet of the composer’s middle period, before he wrote his infamously complex and revolutionary “late quartets.” It is also one of his shortest and most compact. Although cellist Daniel McDonough calls the piece “very dense” and “brusque,” there are moments of light. “You can hear [Beethoven] struggling to find hope,” Freivogel said.

Schubert’s String Quartet No. 15, however, is much more expansive, running almost twice as long as the Beethoven. Symphonic in scope and in how it is orchestrated for the quartet, the piece “has this constant struggle between light and darkness, even in the slow movement,” Freivogel said. Despite its expansiveness, McDonough emphasized, “There’s something kind of spiritual about the Schubert.”

Between these two stalwarts of the late Classical/early Romantic literature comes Kati Agócs’s Imprimatur (2018), a piece co-commissioned by the Aspen Music Festival and School, Harvard Musical Association, and the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in honor of the Jupiter Quartet’s 15th anniversary. Providing some relief after the intensely serious Beethoven quartet, Imprimatur focuses on hope. As Agócs writes, “My piece is a meditation on spiritual lightness, expressing joy and affirmation that is celebratory in tone, via a collective (shared) energy.” There are moments of tension, but not to the extent of the Beethoven. However, it is not entirely disconnected from what surrounds it. According to McDonough, Imprimatur echoes the spirituality of the Schubert: “[Agócs] talks a lot about this kind of ecstatic feeling, and she describes her music as being very rhapsodic. I think it fits well in the lyricism of the Schubert too, that way.”

The Jupiter Quartet’s Krannert season was meant to open on Sunday, October 20 with a performance of Singing Land, a work for chamber choir and string quartet by composer Su Lian Tan with words by botanist/writer Robin Wall Kimmerer. Singing Land is the latest in a series of Jupiter Quartet-commissioned works celebrating the environment. This concert had to be postponed until Sunday, January 26 (time TBD) because Kimmerer was called to the White House to receive the 2023 National Humanities Medal on October 21.

A mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer is the author of several award-winning books, including Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Her work explores the intersection of Western scientific research and Indigenous ecological knowledge. The 2022 MacArthur Fellow lives in Syracuse, New York, where she is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology and the founder/director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment.

The Jupiter Quartet had initially approached author and University of Illinois Professor Emeritus Richard Powers for this project, but he recommended and connected them with Kimmerer. “She was excited to write original text for this piece,” McDonough said. “We figured if she was going to be involved in the composition of the text, we should include her in the concert somehow, too. So, the plan is for her to be on stage and do some readings as part of the Singing Land program.” This is why her presence at the concert was essential.

For the work’s composer, the Jupiter Quartet turned to a frequent collaborator, Su Lian Tan. An award-winning composer, flutist, and teacher, Tan is a professor of music at Middlebury College. Her “wonderfully dramatic music” (Gramophone) is inspired by tonalities, timbres, and themes of her Malaysian Chinese heritage. The Jupiter Quartet introduced Krannert Center audiences to the music of Su Lian Tan last November in their program “Folk Encounters.”

Scored for chamber choir and string quartet, Singing Land will involve the University of Illinois Chamber Singers, directed by Dr. Andrea Solya. McDonough explained that the strings provide the “environmental atmosphere” for the piece—an undulating “background of color”—against which the choir will sing Kimmerer’s words.

Tan and Kimmerer call the work “a new garden of sound, recalling ancient and modern voices and the mysticism of string instruments, voices of bullfrogs, and hawks who cry warnings. The circle of life continues and we create a world that is both spiritual and material. Text becomes music, music weaves the lushness of greenery and the breath exchanging on our planet, perhaps with the required urgency. Are we now in the aubade or the twilight? We can love the earth back to wholeness.”

Singing Land will not be the only work on the program with an environmental theme. The concert will also include Michi Wiancko’s To Unpathed Waters, Undreamed Shores, a piece written specifically for the Jupiter Quartet, commissioned by Bay Chamber Concerts in partnership with Krannert. Ever since they premiered the work virtually in 2020, it has become a mainstay of their repertoire. They have found the piece particularly resonates with high school students, who recognize the existential threat climate change poses to their generation and feel environmental anxiety acutely.

Each of the seven movements captures one aspect of the natural world or humankind’s relationship with it. For instance, there is a movement on forest fires, a movement on an extinct butterfly species from California, and a movement on creatures that live under the soil in Central Park. When the Jupiter Quartet approached Wiancko about writing a piece on climate change, she was eager to write something hopeful that would unite audiences around environmental issues. Although rightfully devastating at times, the piece is ultimately positive.

In addition to the timely subject matter, Wiancko’s use of extended string techniques especially appeals to young audiences. A violinist by training, Wiancko experiments with the unusual sounds one can make with the bow or by knocking on the instruments. She even asks the players to use cards to create a rustling sound. Freivogel said it is fun to engage with audiences by explaining the mechanics of these unusual techniques when they introduce the piece.

Collaboration, be it with composers, lyricists, or performers, is a recurring theme of the Jupiter Quartet’s 2024–25 season. On Tuesday, February 4, violist Phillip Ying and cellist David Ying will join the Jupiter Quartet for a program of string sextets. Brothers Phillip and David are members of the renowned Ying String Quartet, another successful family ensemble. Long-time collaborators and close friends of the Jupiter Quartet, the Ying brothers direct the Bowdoin International Music Festival, which the Jupiter Quartet attends each summer. Anchored by Johannes Brahms’ String Sextet No. 2 in G Major, the concert will also include Richard Strauss’s String Sextet from his opera Capriccio, and Arnold Schoenberg’s tone poem Verklärte Nacht.

Their final program of the season on Thursday, March 13 sees the Jupiter Quartet in concert with the Aris Quartet for Felix Mendelssohn’s beloved Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20. This will be their first time working with the Aris Quartet, which hails from Frankfurt, Germany. However, they have performed the Mendelssohn Octet countless times and even recorded it with the Jasper Quartet (featuring the Freivogels’ brother, J Freivogel, on first violin) in 2021.

Get your tickets to see the Jupiter Quartet this season at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts, and stay tuned for a confirmed time for the rescheduled Singing Land program on Sunday, January 26. If you had already purchased a ticket for Singing Land on October 20, your ticket will automatically be valid for the new date. If you have any questions or choose to return your tickets, please contact the Krannert Ticket Office at 217.333.6280 or kran-tix@illinois.edu.