Seven Days: Vermont's Independent Voice

String Fever

Pavel Haas, a Czech composer murdered at Auschwitz at age 45, never got to hear his third string quartet performed. Nearly 60 years after his death, Prague’s Pavel Haas Quartet formed, swiftly becoming his most driven champions with their Gramophone Award-winning first album. These days, the acclaimed ensemble has broadened its repertoire to pay tribute to classical music’s other founding fathers. Technically polished but emotionally raw and untamed, they perform Tchaikovsky’s Quartet no. 1 in D Major, op. 11, Shostakovich’s Quartet no. 7, op. 108, and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden at a Middlebury stop this Friday.