Albuquerque Journal - 02/04/2024
tional mounted by Site Santa Fe since Louis Grachos returned to the helm of the institution in 2021, which he previously led
R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, has developed an expertise in commissioning and producing ambi-
multiple languages and worldviews, making the International unique among exhibitions of its kind.”
scott as the first Black artist to represent the United States in a single-artist exhibition at Site Santa Fe.
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Cec Site
COURTESY OF FRANK JURGEN
From left, the Brentano Quartet are Misha Amory (viola), Serena Canin (violin), Nina Lee (cello), and Mark Steinberg (violin).
Light &dark
Brentano Quartet’s ‘Chiaroscuro’ coming to the St. Francis Auditorium BY KATHALEEN ROBERTS
T
ASSISTANT ARTS EDITOR
he celebrated Brentano Quartet is bringing “Chiaroscuro” to Santa Fe. Slated for Sunday, Feb. 11, at St. Francis Auditorium, the concert bookends Dmitri Shostakovich’s deeply dark string quartet with a pair of joyful works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Felix Mendelssohn. The quartet named themselves after Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Immortal Beloved.” “We’re named after Antonie Brentano, who was a patron and friend of Beethoven,” said Serena Canin, violinist and original member, in a telephone interview from New York. “He wrote a love confession to an unnamed woman. A Beethoven scholar speculated it was Antonie.” The program’s title “Chiaroscuro” is an artistic term referring to the play of light and dark. “It really applies because two of the pieces are joyful and the Shostakovich is so dark and despairing,” Canin said. The composer dedicated his intensely-personal “String Quartet No. 8” to the victims of fascism and war. He penned the piece in three days while visiting Dresden, Germany, to write a film score about the bombing of Dresden during World War II. “But it wasn’t actually written until 1960,” Canin said. “I think he could see the destruction. “It’s played without pause,” she continued. “He inscribed his name in the piece.” The composer represented his first name Dmitri with the four-note motif of DFCH. In German, F is E-flat and H is B natural. “Every movement in the piece is based on this fournote motif,” Canin said. “It sort of has the feeling of a suicide note. It has the feeling of needing to be born. The drones could sound like aircraft. There’s
February 5, 2024 10:18 am (GMT -7:00)
BRENTANO QUARTET ‘CHIAROSCURO’ WHEN: 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 11 WHERE: St. Francis Auditorium, New Mexico Museum of Art, 107 W. Palace Ave., Santa Fe HOW MUCH: $24-$94 at tickets.sfpromusica.org, 505-988-4640 x1000 despair in it.” The program will open with Mozart’s contrasting “Quartet in D Major.” The composer likely wrote it for his publisher and friend Franz Anton Hoffmeister, giving it the nickname “Hoffmeister.” “It’s very genial; it’s very up, with different characters” Canin said. “He sort of thought in operatic characters. It has a very beautiful opening. We start all in unison. It has the feel of an origami sculpture opening.” Mendelssohn’s “Quartet in D Major” provides an uplifting ending. “The Mendelssohn is absolutely beautiful with the feeling of exuberance and joyful expression,” Canin said. The composer dedicated it to the crown prince of Sweden. Canin grew up in a musical family; both her parents were pianists. She took piano lessons, but they didn’t stick. She began the violin at age 7. “I wanted an instrument of my own,” she said. “It was really in college when I figured it out, Swarthmore College had a student string quartet. That turned out to be the thing I absolutely loved. “It represents a way of being in the world,” she continued. “It has an idealism behind it. The whole can be better than the sum of its parts.” Before they land in Santa Fe, the Brentano Quartet will travel to London, Luxembourg, Germany and Amsterdam.
Supper Rock Park in the Foothills looking west.
SUPPER ROCK >> From PAGE D1
sundown for our picnics,” she said. “That was how the rock got its name.” The Journal replied: “Supper Rock is still there, about a mile or less north of the Western Skies Hotel … Houses are going up around the famous picnic spot for early Albuquerqueans but the very visible Supper Rock can be seen easily from the freeway.” No clear answer exists for when the tradition began, but notices about people hosting get-togethers out there started to pop-up in local newspapers after 1915. On Memorial Day in 1918, the Rotary Club of Albuquerque planned a huge gathering “promptly at sunset,” with attendees encouraged to bring a basket lunch, according to a May 24 story in the Albuquerque Morning Journal. The guest speaker on that day was New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Richard H. Hanna, whose parents came to New Mexico from Kankakee, Illinois in 1900. The day also included patriotic songs provided by the Indian School band. The club said at the time that it hoped to make this an annual custom featuring “quaint Indian dances typical of the southwest … given by some of the different tribes of Indians living adjacent to Albuquerque.” “It has been decided by the Rotarians that as the southwest enjoyed its civilization years before the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock, it is fitting that some of the customs of our early pioneers should be kept fresh in the minds of the people,” the story said. “It is hoped that the first year will see several thousand people assembled at this historic spot where a typical New Mexico sunset can be observed.” Although the event was a big to-do, the Rotary club had been using the rock as a gathering place for many years. An announcement in the April 16, 1916, Albuquerque Journal discusses the Rotary club’s “first mesa picnic of the season” in which “a party motored out to the Supper Rock … and had a jolly good outing.” It was obvious, despite the modern way they arrived at the spot, the approach to gender roles remained firmly unmodern. “A hot lunch was cooked by the feminine contingent upon arrival at the picnic ground, to which full justice was done,” the article said. “And then everybody sat around a big bonfire, and sat, and sat, and sat.” Supper Rock was a popular destination for other groups and people as well, according to news-
The Supper Rock playground with the actual S
Supper Rock sign in the Northeast Heights. paper articles from the first half of the 1900s. University of New Mexico’s Army Training Corps took a hike out there in November of 1918. A group from the Methodist church spent the afternoon up there in August of 1919 eating, indulging in games, singing and telling stories. On a Wednesday in September of 1920, a doctor and his wife hosted a picnic supper there and in June of 1923 the member of the Woman’s Club Chorus hosted a picnic for their families. The members of the Federal Employees Union hosted a picnic lunch there in June of 1925, followed by the University Association of Engineers “weenie roast” in September. Miss Grace Friend and Mr. Dan G. Steckdaub tied the knot on top of Supper Rock on July 14, 1934, leaving that evening to make a new home in California. On and on and on, an endless stream of people made there way to the boulder outcropping described in one article as a “short distance from the Tijeras road near the foot of the mountains east of the city.” The Supper Rock picnic area was also once a place for University of New Mexico students to show
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