http://ipraudio.interlochen.org/Enso.mp3
The Enso String Quartet is spending a week in residency here at Interlochen. The quartet's stay features classes with string musicians and some concerts, too.
The Enso Quartet was nominated for a Grammy award for its CD from 2009. On it they play music by Alberto Ginastera, an Argentinian composer from the 20th-century. Ginastera used driving Argentinian folk rhythms and put them in a classical framework. But a very modern classical framework.
Enso is Japanese for the Zen painting of the circle. It represents the endless circle of life. And what the Enso Quartet plays is certainly not restrained by time. For example, in one Interlochen concert, they play a Beethoven String Quartet and one by Benjamin Britten. Beethoven represents the late 18th and early 19th-centuries, Britten the 20th. (He died in 1976.)
The Enso String Quartet performs Saturday, August 20, at 8 p.m. at Interlochen's Corson Auditorium. They'll play the listener-friendly Dvorak "American" Quartet and the demanding Bartok Quartet No. 2.
--Brad Aspey