By Randi Bjornstad

The Delgani String Quartet continues its 2022-23 season with a program called Delgani III: Transatlantic Journey, featuring compositions by Tomáš Svoboda, Ernest Bloch, and Antonin Dvořák.

The quartet is bolstered by the participation of German pianist Frank-Immo Zichner, who will join them in playing Bloch’s Piano Quintet No. 2 and Dvořák’s similarly named Piano Quintet No. 2.

But before those quintets, Delgani will open its concert with Svoboda’s Tenth Quartet.

The Bloch quintet is of particular interest to Oregonians, because the composer spent the last nearly two decades of his life on the Oregon Coast, and he wrote his Piano Quintet No. 2 while staying near Agate Beach in Newport.

He was Swiss-American, born in Geneva in 1880, studied musical composition in Germany, and relocated to the United States in 1916, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1924. He was the first music director of the Cleveland Institute of Music before relocating to San Francisco to lead its Conservatory of Music. He spent the 1930s back in Switzerland before returning to the United States, where he joined the music faculty at the University of California at Berkeley, remaining there until his retirement in 1952.

After that, he lived primarily at Agate Beach, near Newport, and that is where he composed his Piano Quintet No. 2, which in some ways reinterprets musically the feel of the sea and the surge of the waves. He died in Portland, of cancer, in 1959, at age 78.

Svoboda, composer of the opening piece on the program, was junior to Bloch by nearly 60 years. He was Czech-American but was born in Paris. He had his musical debut of his Symphony No. 1 in Prague in 1957, two years before Bloch’s death. He spent much of his career on the music faculty of Portland State University and died at age 82 in Portland, a decade after suffering a major stroke.

Probably the best known of the three in terms of name recognition, Dvořák was born in 1841 and was considered Czech Austro-Hungarian. He began his musical career, first as a violinist and then a composer, in 1872 in Prague. He moved to New York City in 1892 as director of the National Conservatory of Music of America. A year later, he moved to Spillville, Iowa, where he composed some of his most successful works, including his String Quartet in F major, Op. 96, better known as American Quartet. He returned to his native Bohemia to live in 1895. He is commemorated in New York City by a statue in Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Square. He died in Prague in 1904 at age 62 of an undiagnosed illness, sometimes described as influenza.

The Delgani String Quartet will be joined by pianist Frank-Immo Zichner, who has a wide performance repertoire that includes the main works of solo and chamber music but also works of mostly forgotten composers. He has released more than 25 CD recordings and has performed in concerts in more than 30 countries throughout Europe, Southeast Asia, Central and South America, and Japan.

Zichner’s primary musical training was in Germany, and for more than 10 years he has taught at Berlin University of the Arts, where he founded its Centre for Chamber Music. He also has been a visiting professor at the University of Music in Bloomington, Ind.

Members of the Delgani String Quartet include violinists Anthea Kreston and Jannie Wei, violist Kimberlee Uwate, and cellist Eric Alterman.

Delgani III: Transatlantic Journey

When and where:

  • Corvallis — 7:30 p.m. on Friday, March 3; First Presbyterian Church, 114 SW 8th St.
  • Salem — 3 p.m. on Saturday,March 4; Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, 5090 Center Street NE
  • Eugene* — 3 p.m. on Sunday, March 5; First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1390 Pearl St.
  • Eugene* — 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 7; First Church of Christ, Scientist 1390 Pearl St.
  • Portland — 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, March 9; Lincoln Recital Hall, Portland State University, 1620 SW Park Ave.

*Asterisked performances also live-streamed

Tickets: $28 adults, $5 students, free to children 12 years; available online at delgani.org