When September rolls around we can be sure that Yuri Funahashi and Laurie Kennedy have been moving and shaking in the world of chamber music and are about to unveil for our delectation something that is between the superlative and the sublime. Every year (and particularly welcome after their recent sabbatical) these two founders of Maine Mountain Chamber Music call on their seemingly endless contacts in the world of the smaller instrumental ensemble to bring us treats from an international line-up of fantastically talented musicians.

To begin this year’s season, Yuri and Laurie are bringing the renowned Daedalus String Quartet, four young musicians who have nevertheless been making magnificent music for around 13 years. Yuri supplied the link via email: “Our connection to the Daedalus is Tom Kraines, the cellist of the quartet, who has performed a few times with us on the MMCM series and is one of our favorite musicians/people. He joined the Daedalus a few years ago and we have been hoping/planning to bring the quartet here since.” Yuri and Laurie will naturally be performing as well, and the Daedalus has chosen two of its three major works to include the talents of our local impresariae.

This brilliant partnership takes the stage at UMF’s Nordica Auditorium tomorrow night, Saturday, Sept. 12, at 7:30 p.m. The concert is sponsored by the Arts Institute of Western Maine; admission is $12, free for those 18 and under and for students with ID.

The program will consist of Mendelssohn’s String Quintet #2 in B Flat, Op. 87; The Space Between, by Anna Weesner; and Brahms’ Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34.

Yuri is playing the Brahms Piano Quintet with the quartet, and Laurie is playing the Mendelssohn Quintet, which is scored for two violas along with the other string voices.

Originally conceived as a string quintet with two cellos, Brahms’ Quintet metamorphosed into a sonata for two pianos before its final transformation into the Piano Quintet. Hermann Levi, who had suggested the change, wrote to Brahms in 1865, “The Quintet is beautiful beyond words. Anyone who did not know it in its earlier forms of string quintet and two-piano sonata would never believe that it was not originally thought out and designed for the present combination of instruments… You have turned a monotonous work for two pianos into a thing of great beauty, a masterpiece of chamber music…”

Mendelssohn’s String Quintet #2 was written two years before his death, at age 39, in 1847. Although Mendelssohn chose to not have the quintet published, it is considered today to be one of his best chamber works, at times joyful and dramatic, at times somber and intense; a finale which “hurls the Quintet back into action, serving up the most blazing rhythms yet for a rapid dash towards the finish lines” writes Tim Greiving.

If Yuri and Laurie have anything to do with the programming you may be sure that there is going to be something out of the ordinary involved. For this concert the surprise will be Anna Weesner’s piece, The Space Between. Anna Weesner teaches composition at the University of Pennsylvania where the Daedalus is the Quartet in Residence.

The composer describes her quartet thus: “Formally, the piece is a multi-movement piece played continuously. The Space Between grew out of a quartet I wrote for the Call and Response project by the Cypress Quartet in 2001. The connection between this piece and the first movement of that piece is evident, but the presence of new material and recasting of salvaged material makes this a distinct piece. I’m deeply grateful to the amazing quartets I’ve gotten to work with while writing this piece: the Cypress Quartet, the Cassatt Quartet and the Daedalus Quartet.

“For me, as a composer in general, and in The Space Between in particular, the designation of soft or loud in the music might also be expressed as near or far, or as private or public. The piece opens with a strangely loud, aggressive and, I’d say, public unison in four players that is immediately contrasted with a soft and private high note in the first violin alone.

“In a sense, the dialogue between these two “voices” travels the entire piece. I suppose this dichotomy might also be described as the one and the many. It seems a happy thing that words might fail here, as it helps highlight those ineffable, nonverbal strengths of music itself.

“At any rate, the string quartet seems a perfect medium for exploration of these sonic possibilities of blend and individuality. The notion of the sound of near versus far might also be heard in a temporal way, as in the sound of an earlier time juxtaposed with a sound of now. And indeed, I’ve experimented in coaching with asking the quartet to play various passages “as you would play Mozart”, for example, or in reference to some other style of composer. In this way, I hope to tap in to those performance modes that come so easily to experienced players and to listeners as well.

“One question I think this piece attempts to ask is about melody, about what it means to write a simple melody in a string quartet now. The simplest and most straightforwardly presented melody comes deliberately rather late in the game in this piece, which I hear as being related to the expression of near and far, or then and now.”

Intriguing, as a verbal expression of “those ineffable, nonverbal strengths of music itself.” Since its founding, the Daedalus Quartet has performed in many of the world’s leading musical venues, including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington; and abroad, among many others, at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Praised by The New Yorker as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the Daedalus Quartet has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles.

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