PUTNEY — Yellow Barn continues its 2019-2020 residency series with a free public concert by Lassus Quartett on Tuesday, Nov. 12, at 4 p.m. at the Putney School's Currier Center.
Lassus Quartett is a Swiss-based string quartet with violinists Joel Bardolet and Antonio Viñuales, violist Adam Newman, and cellist David Eggert. The group will perform Morton Feldman's gigantic String Quartet No. 2, a work lasting nearly six hours.
Inspired by the intricate immensity of Turkish tapestries, the work is performed without pause, allowing sounds to accumulate into patterns to reveal the whole. Audience members are invited to attend any or all of the performance and to leave and return of their own accord.
In collaboration with Candle in the Night owner Larry Simons, the Currier Center will be filled with Turkish rugs surrounded by wooden benches, inviting audience members to sit or lie down on the floor and transforming the Currier Center into a meditative space.
An adjacent room will be designed for rest and hydration, allowing listeners to take breaks without interrupting their experience.
Described by New Yorker writer Alex Ross as “a disorienting, transfixing experience that repeatedly approached and touched the sublime,” Feldman's monumental work requires extraordinary endurance on the part of the musicians; quartets have backed out of performances because the physical pain became too much.
Says the Lassus Quartett about their residency: “Our challenge is to investigate narrative and fundamentally deconstruct all conventional approaches to dramaturgy in performance. How do we transport the listener (not to mention ourselves) over such vast stretches of music? Where are we headed?”
The event is free. Reservations are encouraged: visit www.yellowbarn.org or call 802-387-6637.