Well, I guess I'll be the first to post on the new WASHINGTON Da Capo Quartet blog. We learned tonight that we have competition. Who knew there was another Da Capo Quartet.....who sound a bit more accomplished than we? But we were a fully-formed quartet BEFORE that Da Capo Quartet was (we think). So we are pondering a lawsuit. But we may just change our name to the Washington Da Capo Quartet. Washington DC Quartet. Or, because of our love of Shostakovich, the Washington Da Capo Qbabtet.
Anyway, for some background, we are a bunch of teachers (2 former, 2 current). I (David, Violin II) teach Government in Silver Spring, MD, Jessica (Cello) teaches World History in Fairfax County, VA, Valerie (Violin I) taught English in Silver Spring, MD and now dabbles in college near Baltimore. And Del (Viola) taught EVERYthing a long time ago (mostly in Philadelphia). We've been playing together as a group for.....I don't know.....8 years? Did we start in 2002? Correct me, please... We leaving qbabtetting together. We laugh, we cry, stumble, we persevere, we clear our heads. It's great fun. Perhaps our greatest asset is Del's qbabtet library. He owns EVERYthing, which is awesome. For an amateur quartet, we've sure played a whole lot of quartets.
We made a recent pact to play ALL of the Haydn string quartets, hence my blog post title. One down (the first.....actually NOT his first, but the first in the first book of Beruehmtes....and it was kind of fun and not so easy, especially for Violin I) and only 82 more to go (I think).
We also played Bartok #1 (Jessica, correct me if I'm wrong) for the 3rd or 4th time and it started actually coming together (in parts). We enjoy it a little more each time! I have an atonal little ditty stuck in my head right now, in fact.
More soon....
David
We definitely had the name Da Capo quartet before the other group - the book goes back to 2003!
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