Afiara Quartet to Return to Morrison Artists Series

EXAMINER.COM -- When the Afiara Quartet was first establishing its reputation, it served as apprentice fellowship quartet-in-residence at San Francisco State University for the 2005 – 06 term. The group then returned to SFSU in February of 2010 as part of that season’s Morrison Artists Series, created as part of the May Treat Morrison Chamber Music Center. On that occasion their program could be called a “study in dissonance,” juxtaposing Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s K. 465 (“Dissonance”) quartet in C major with Alban Berg’s 1926 “Lyric Suite.” Both Mozart and Berg appreciated how dissonance could confront the listener with ambiguities whose resolutions could not be anticipated. However, while Mozart confined his ambiguities to the 22 measures introducing the first movement of his quartet, Berg kept them coming for all six movements of his composition, adding, at one point, the “iconic” ambiguity of Richard Wagner’s “Tristan chord” for good measure.