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  • Ripley Presents Aryaloka String Quartet

    Music of Sorrow, Joy and Transcendence: Three String Quartets.

    Friday, May 9, 2025, 7:30 p.m.

    Live in-person and live streamed from the stunning Ripley Chapel at First Congregational Church, Winchester. Please join us for an inspired and dynamic evening of string quartet music with “Aryaloka String Quartet,” highlighting four of Boston’s finest string players: Beth Welty and Mark Latham, violins; Noralee Walker, viola; Sandi-Jo Malmon, cello.

    The Aryaloka String Quartet will perform a concert of three quartets by Shostakovich, Max Mueller (the premiere of this work), and Ludwig van Beethoven. Superficially these works are quite different. However, they all explore and express our very human longings, joys, sorrows, and the desire for transcendence.

    The Soviet composer Dimitri Shostakovich composed his fourth quartet in 1949, a time of great challenges for Soviet artists. Yet, while there is apparent discord in its music, it is, at the same time, full of a serene tranquility, lyricism as well as humor and fun.

    The first quartet of the American composer Max Mueller was commissioned for the Aryaloka Quartet by Barbara Thomas. Max Mueller is a Los Angeles based film composer and orchestrator. He has scored several short and feature films.

    At the end of his life Beethoven poured his creative energies into writing five string quartets. Opus 132 is the second of these. Richard Wagner said of these late quartets, “Let us wonder at the entirely new world…that meets us there.” JNW Sullivan writes: “In the last quartets…Beethoven is exploring new regions of consciousness. When we come to the last quartets we find a remote spiritual content. We here become aware not only of new syntheses of spiritual elements, but of radically new elements.”

    Please join us in traversing these diverse musical landscapes of the human spirit.

    Tickets are $20 General Admission / $5 students In Person or Live Streamed
    Purchase Tickets Here

    For more information about the concert, please contact Jane Ring Frank at 857-919-0983 or jane@fcc-winchester.org.

     

    IMPORTANT NOTE: Ripley Chapel can be found at First Congregational Church, Winchester, 21 Church St. The entry is located on the Vine Street side of the church. Please use the accessible ramp entrance, and Ripley Chapel will be directly to your right as you enter the building.

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