Greetings. I'm Arnold Steinhardt, and I have been a proud member of the Guarneri string quartet for 45 years. We retired in 2009, and so I guess you would call us the older generation of string quartet players, but I have the privilege of being with the younger generation of string quartet players, a wonderful string quartet, the Aizuri string quartet. And so Aizuris, I welcome you and I would love for you to introduce yourself individually, please. Hello. My name is Miho Saegusa. I'm Zoe Martin-Doike. I'm Karen Ouzounian. And my name is Ayane Kozasa. As Mr. Steinhardt mentioned, we are a very young quartet. We formed in October 2012. And how this all started, was that back in the summer of 2011, myself, Miho, and Karen, we went to a summer music festival called the Ravinia Steans Music Institute, in Chicago. At some point in the summer, Miho and I had the chance to play together in a group. And we realized how much fun it was to work together. And so we started talking about how it would be great to try and start a group. And Miho was good friends with Karen back in--where they lived at the time in New York. And so Miho said that, "Maybe we should try and play with Karen." And so the three of us got together that summer and read some trios together. And it was so much fun, and we talked about how maybe this could really become something real. Possibly a string quartet, if we can find an additional member. It's really important to find that fourth member. Or, all members, who are willing to go for it together and who think the same way and who really get along. And so we took a year to find someone. And we all got together in my Philly apartment that fall, and read some string quartets with Zoe. And the moment it was over we discovered how awesome we sounded. And how much fun it was. And we realized that we found our fourth member. And so that with the beginning of this whole string quartet. Right. And some of you may be wondering how we decided on our name, Aizuri. It was actually a really long and difficult process for us to find a name. And we threw out all kinds of ideas, some of which were really ridiculous, and some of which were almost right, but didn't quite work for us. But eventually, Karen came across the Aizuri, which is a Japanese word. And it's a style of woodblock printing, specifically using shades of indigo ink. So, we thought the word sounded really beautiful, and it also hearkens to the fact that we have Japanese heritage within the quartet. And that's how we got our name. This is just amazing listening to you, because you could almost have been speaking about how the Guarneri Quartet formed. You know, we played together at Curtis in twos and threes, and then we played at the Marlboro Music Festival. and gradually, we got the idea, "This is so much fun. It is so rewarding, the repertoire is so great. Wouldn't it be wonderful to form a string quartet? But with whom?" And then what once we had the four members, we thought, "Well, we need a name," and we couldn't find a name. So that was another story. In any case we are all very grateful that you found one another. You sound wonderful. You're a marvelous young quartet. And so, we are gathered here to speak about a great piece of music. And that would be Beethoven's first string quartet, Opus 18 Number One. We're going to discuss it. We're going to examine it. The Aizuris are going to play a section of the beginning of the first movement of Beethoven's Opus 18 Number One. Then we're going to speak about it a little bit more.
