The Jupiter Quartet presents a video performance of Alberto Ginastera’s String Quartet no.1, op. 20, Movement II. Vivacissimo. The video marks its first performing with new violinist, Mélanie Clapiès, following the departure of Nelson Lee in September 2025.
Ginastera wrote his String Quartet no.1 in Buenos Aires in 1948, where it won the Carlo Lopez Buchardo prize in a national competition for composers. It received its first performance the following year and was selected by the International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Frankfurt in 1951, where it was performed by the Koechert Quartet.
On the four-movement work, Ginastera described it containing ’rhythms of Argentine folk music [that] can still be perceived through a re-creation of an imaginary folklore’.
’In this quartet I find that some characteristics of my own artistic personality materialise for the first time: strong and incisive rhythms, adagios that are anxiety-ridden, lyrical and contemplative and atmospheres that are mysterious, nocturnal and surrealistic.’
The Jupiter Quartet’s next album – its final recording with Lee – will be released in April on Orchid Classics. Titled Undreamed Shores, the album includes works by Stephen Taylor, Kati Agócs, and Michi Wiancko.
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