Lyrica Chamber Music presents Attacca Quartet on April 22

For Andrew Yee, cellist of the Attacca Quartet, there are the notes on the page of the score. And then there is the story behind the music.

“Rehearsals often start with stories of the composer or something someone wrote about them,” Yee said. “I love the process of figuring out how to turn story into music and make the audience feel something and not know why.”

Lyrica Chamber Music will present an afternoon of storytelling and music making when the Attacca Quartet plays works by Haydn, Schumann and Shostakovich Sunday, April 22, at 3 p.m. at the Presbyterian Church of Chatham Township, 240 Southern Blvd.

Besides Yee, members of the Attacca Quartet include violinists Amy Schroeder and Keiko Tokunaga and violist Nathan Schram. They will be joined by Lyrica’s artistic director, pianist David Kaplan, for the Shostakovich Piano Quintet.

When it comes to credentials for playing the music of Haydn, the Attacca’s are tough to beat.

“A few years ago we completed a six-year long project called ‘The 68’ where we performed all 68 of Haydn’s Quartets in concert,” Yee said. “It was one of the most inspiring projects I think I will ever be a part of.”

And while the quartet will be playing the Third String Quartet of the strongly romantic composer Robert Schumann, and the piano quintet of Shostakovich, who lived in a time of turmoil and tragedy, it is the slow movement of Haydn’s Op. 77, No. 2 quartet that evokes a particularly strong emotional response for Yee.

“The slow movement of Op. 77, No. 2 is one of the great theme and variations, as well as one of the most beautiful serene slow movements,” Yee said. “When the theme reappears just slightly changed at the end, it is one of the most heartbreaking stretches of music I know.”

In playing the complete 68 Haydn quartets, the Attacca had a few favorites. But others took them by surprise, including Op. 77, No. 2. “The imagination and compositional virtuosity were intoxicating.”

When it comes to creating emotion in music, Schumann’s Third Quartet doesn’t disappoint.

“The quartet is a love letter to his new wife Clara, and it is deeply personal and vulnerable,” Yee said. “There is a falling gesture he introduces in the first movement that was actually borrowed from one of Clara’s works. It’s almost like reading a diary; I feel like I want to look over my shoulder while studying the score.”

The Shostakovich Piano Quintet offers a variety of moods to the listener, from the extreme intensity of the fourth movement to the high spirits of the fifth.

“The piece starts off with just the piano alone and then turns into a screaming high cello solo, so we have pretty much reached our limit right off the bat,” Yee said. “The music gets intense and retreats into the slow fugue which is followed by an exciting scherzo and second slow movement. What is really funny is how the piece ends, which seems almost like a carnival, which has to be some sort of tongue in cheek thing.”

The internationally acclaimed Attacca Quartet is one of the most dynamic ensembles of its generation. Praised by The Strad for possessing “maturity beyond its members’ years,” it was formed at the Juilliard School in 2003 and made its professional debut in 2007 as part of the Artists International Winners Series in Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall.

From 2011-2013 the Attacca Quartet served as the Juilliard Graduate Resident String Quartet, and for the 2014-2015 season it was selected as the Quartet in Residence by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. As stated by The Washington Post, “Mastery like this is scarce enough in quartets that have played together for decades.”

The Attacca Quartet can be heard on three recordings: an album of quartet works by contemporary composer Michael Ippolito; a recording of Yee’s arrangement of Haydn’s “The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross; and the complete works for string quartet by John Adams.

Tickets for the concert are $25-$30. For more information about Lyrica Chamber Music, visit www.lyricachambermusic.org or call 973-309-1668.