Rosamunde String Quartet

All four members of this decade-veteran ensemble hail from top international orchestras—two in Germany and two in the United States—and the two based on this side of the Atlantic have notable Ravinia ties. Violist Teng Li took over the principal chair in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at this time last year, and cellist Nathan Vickery, a member of the New York Philharmonic, is an alum of Ravinia’s renowned Steans Institute (where Li spent a week on faculty before the CSO took residence for the summer). Rounding out the ensemble are Noah Bendix-Balgley, first concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic, and Shanshan Yao, a violinist with the Kammerakademie Potsdam in Germany who was formerly a NY Phil member. With their packed orchestral schedules, the quartet convenes only two or three times a year to deliver thoroughly unique performances—like their seven-city tour last March that included stops at the University of Michigan and Chamber Music Pittsburgh.

For its Ravinia debut, the Rosamunde is shaping a program around the String Quartet No. 1 (Lyric) by George Walker (1922–2018), who became the first Black composer to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 1996. The nickname Lyric? It comes from the movement that’s taken on a life of its own as orchestral music, similar to the Adagio for Strings.