Red Rock String Ensemble to play Mozart, Vivaldi, at Sacred Heart

Violinist Roberta Mezo-Arruda, originally from Brazil, is a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and is concert master of the UNM Orchestra. [courtesy photo]

By Independent staff

GALLUP — The music of Mozart, Vivaldi, and Borodin will be featured in a special concert this week at the Sacred Heart Cathedral.

The Red Rock String Ensemble will be joined by husband and wife guest musicians Laszlo and Roberta Mezo-Arruda in a 7:30 p.m. performance on Friday at the cathedral, located at 415 E. Green Ave. Admission is free for the concert, which is being sponsored by the Gallup Independent, Dr. Dean Yannias, and Sacred Heart Cathedral.

Cellist Laszlo Mezo-Arudda, originally from Hungary, is a graduate student at the UCLA. Violinist Roberta Mezo-Arruda, originally from Brazil, is a graduate student at the University of New Mexico and is concertmaster of the UNM Orchestra.

The Red Rock String Ensemble includes the following local musicians: violinists Jennifer Boots-Marshall, Kate Lammers, Tara Lucio, and Susie Fronterotta; Bill Krzymowski and Heather Haveman, viola; Doug Mason, cello; Roy Howard, bass; and Elaine Bobo, harpsichord. Pet Neff will serve as conductor.

The evening’s program includes String Quintet in C minor, K. 406 by Mozart (1756-1791), Concerto for Violin and Cello in B flat, RV 547 by Vivaldi (1678-1741), and String Quartet No. 2 in D major by Borodin (1833-1887).

Mozart’s Quintet in C minor is his own transcription of his admirable Serenade in C minor for eight wind instruments, K. 388, which he composed in July 1782, at the same time as the Symphony No. 35, just before his marriage to Constance. It is an immense masterpiece, worthy of Mozart’s later works, very condensed, profound, and lacking in ornamentation.

Vivaldi’s concerto comes from a collection of his manuscripts in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Turin, Italy. It was part of the Venetian composer’s own private collection of his works, which lay unidentified until the 1920s. Of Vivaldi’s 500-odd concertos, more than 200 are for solo violin, over 100 for other solo instruments, around 50 for two instruments, around 60 for string orchestra without soloist, and the remainder for three or more soloists.

Contemporary accounts of the red-haired priest-composer agree that he was quick, impulsive, eccentric and spontaneous — personal characteristics which correspond to the style of his music.

The String Quartet No. 2 in D major, by Borodin, a Russian scientist and composer, is different from many of his other works in two ways: it was completed quickly, during August 1881, and it lacks a published program. These two factors may be related; Borodin dedicated the quartet to his wife Ekaterina, and it was written as an evocation of when they met and fell in love in Heidelberg 20 years earlier. The composer seems to have represented himself in this quartet with the cello — he was an amateur player — while Ekaterina is portrayed by the first violin. Each of the movements is warm and blissful, the whole suggesting the depiction of a growing, deepening love.