ATHENS, Ga. — UGA Presents opens the 2019-2020 Franklin College Chamber Music Series Oct. 22 with the Payne Memorial Concert, featuring the award-winning Takács Quartet. Named for William Jackson Payne, the former dean of Franklin College who founded the chamber music series, the Payne Memorial Concert is free and no tickets are required. The program begins at 7:30 p.m. in Hodgson Concert Hall and will include works by Mozart, Bartók and Beethoven.
The Takács Quartet was formed in 1975 at the Franz Liszt Academy in Budapest by Gabor Takács-Nagy, Károly Schranz, Gabor Ormai and András Fejér, while all four were students. The quartet received international attention in 1977, winning First Prize and the Critics’ Prize at the International String Quartet Competition in Evian, France.
In 2001 the Takács was awarded the Order of Merit of the Knight’s Cross of the Republic of Hungary, and in 2011 each member of the quartet was awarded the Order of Merit Commander’s Cross by the President of the Republic of Hungary.
The quartet is now based in Boulder at the University of Colorado. Its current members, Edward Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins), Geraldine Walther (viola) and András Fejér (cello), perform 80 concerts a year worldwide, including annual concerts as Associate Artists at London’s Wigmore Hall.
The ensemble won the 2011 Award for Chamber Music and Song presented by the Royal Philharmonic Society in London, and in 2012 Gramophone magazine announced that the Takács was the only string quartet to be inducted into its first Hall of Fame, along with such legendary artists as Jascha Heifetz and Leonard Bernstein.
The Takács Quartet has won three Gramophone Awards, a Grammy Award, three Japanese Record Academy Awards, Disc of the Year at the inaugural BBC Music Magazine Awards and Ensemble Album of the Year at the Classical Brits.
The Athens concert will be recorded for broadcast on American Public Media’s Performance Today, the most popular classical music program in the United States.
A pre-performance talk will be given by Patrick Castillo, from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center. The talk begins at 6:45 p.m. in Ramsey Concert Hall.
For more information, contact the Performing Arts Center at 706-542-4400 or online at pac.uga.edu.
The concert is supported by Jane Payne and John A. Maltese. The media partner is WUGA 91.7/94.5 FM.
Hodgson Concert Hall and Ramsey Concert Hall are located in the UGA Performing Arts Center at 230 River Road in Athens.