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Vermeer Quartet
Members of NIU's Vermeer Quartet are Shmuel Ashkenasi, Marc Johnson, Mathias Tacke and Richard Young

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News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan
NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

December 14, 2005

NIU's Vermeer Quartet earns
Grammy nomination for recording
of Bartók string quartets

DeKalb — Grammy nominees from Chicagoland include more than Kanye West, Common and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.

Northern Illinois University 's Vermeer Quartet has earned its third Grammy nod, this time for a two-disc package that its members say represents the second notch on the measuring sticks for string quartets.

“Bartók: Complete String Quartets,” released in 2004 on the Naxos label, is nominated in the Best Chamber Music Performance category. The Vermeer was nominated for Grammy honors in 1994 for Haydn's “The Seven Last Words of Christ” and in 2003 for a CD of piano quintets by Russian composers Shostakovich and Schnittke.

Competition for the award comes from Martha Argerich, the Borodin Quartet, the Borealis Wind Quintet and the Emerson String Quartet.

The Grammy Awards are televised Wednesday, Feb. 8, on CBS.

“Of the hundreds of CDs released this year, for this to be acknowledged as one of the best in the chamber music field is an honor,” said Richard Young, violist with the quartet which has been part of the resident artist faculty of the NIU School of Music since 1970.

“It's fair to say that, for every string quartet in the world, the repertoire by which we are all measured is the Beethoven string quartets,” Young added. “But if there is any other group of works that provides a similar test, particularly from the 20th century, it would be these six Bartók quartets. These works have been part of our repertoire throughout our career, and it's nice to finally get them recorded.”

Members of the Vermeer – Young, violinists Shmuel Ashkenasi and Mathias Tacke, and cellist Marc Johnson – recorded the six quartets over the last two years at a studio near Toronto .

“Whenever we could grab some time, or were performing somewhere nearby, we would use that chance to record,” Young said.

“In the first half of the 20th century, when they were still new, the Bartók quartets were considered the most challenging ever written from a technical standpoint. And it's true that they revolutionized string quartet technique, just as Beethoven's had done a century earlier. Over the years, performances have too often tended to showcase the music's raw energy at the expense of its inner beauty,” Young added. “But the public's appreciation of the Bartók quartets has evolved, and ensembles are now expected to bring more than high energy and impressive technique to the table. Therefore, just as with Beethoven, the ultimate challenge today is to communicate the broadest possible range of beauty, intellect and passion.”

Formed in 1969 at the Marlboro Festival, the Vermeer has performed at virtually all of the most prestigious festivals, including Tanglewood, Aldeburgh, Norfolk, Aspen, Mostly Mozart, Lucerne, Flanders, Bath, South Bank, Schleswig-Holstein, Orlando, Albuquerque, Stresa, Berlin, Ravinia, Spoleto, Santa Fe, Edinburgh, Taos, Great Woods and the Casals Festival.

The Vermeer's members – originally from Israel, Germany, New York and Nebraska, providing a unique blend of musical and cultural backgrounds – are Fellows of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, where they have presented annual master classes since 1978. Their numerous recordings include the complete quartets by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, plus works by Schubert, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, Verdi, Brahms and Haydn.

In 2000, the quartet was named Outstanding Studio Teachers by the Illinois chapter of the American String Teachers Association, based on their commitment to fine teaching, high standards of musicianship and community involvement.

The quartet also stirred justices of the U.S. Supreme Court with a 2003 command performance at the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

Ashkenasi, Johnson, Tacke and Young now are in the middle of a recording of English music by composers Benjamin Britten and Arthur Bliss for release next fall by Cedille Records. For two of the works they'll be joined by Alex Klein, the former principal oboist of the Chicago Symphony. The third string quartet by Britten completes the disc.

Meanwhile, the Vermeer members will wait for the news from Los Angeles.

“The Grammies have really spread their focus in recent years in order to broaden their cultural appeal. For instance, it wasn't all that long ago that they established a whole new category for Latino music. They're trying to touch as many bases as possible,” Young said. “But thank goodness they're not doing so at the expense of classical music.”

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