BACK ON THE SCHEDULE: The Doric String Quartet is coming to Richardson Auditorium following a previously booked concert that was cancelled due to the pandemic. (Photo by George Garnier)

After a pandemic-related cancellation, the U.K.-based Doric String Quartet at last makes its Princeton University Concerts (PUC) debut on Thursday, May 2, at 7:30 p.m. at Richardson Auditorium on the Princeton University campus. Their program includes Ludwig van Beethoven String Quartet in G Major, Op. 18, No. 2, Franz Schubert String Quartet No. 15 in G Major, D. 887, and Brett Dean String Quartet No. 3 Hidden Agendas, a work written for the Doric String Quartet and inspired as a response to today’s political climate.

The composer first began collaborating with the Doric String Quartet in 2007, when he heard them play his composition Eclipse at the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition.

“[As] I listened, I became increasingly aware that this was one of the finest and most insightful interpretations of a piece of mine that I’d ever heard,” he said. “[Hidden Agendas] represents my first opportunity to write a work specifically for them…with individual movement titles such as Hubris, Self-censorship, and On-message, it’s fair to say that this piece – with its five partially connected movements exhibiting strong extremes of energy, dynamics and expression – is a somewhat oblique, abstract look at certain aspects of the strangely fascinating and invariably unsettling political climate of extreme personalities, Twitter-outrage, group-think, and other challenges to the democratic process in which we seem to find ourselves as we enter the 2020s.”

“This concert is the final concert of our 2023-24 season,” said PUC Director Marna Seltzer, “and it exemplifies so much of what this season has been all about — celebrating the next generation of leading artists, reflecting on the context in which the music we love exists, and resetting after the disruption of the pandemic. In the hands of these exceptional musicians, I have no doubt that we will end our 130th season on a poignantly uplifting note.”

The morning after their performance in Princeton, the Doric String Quartet will visit Trenton Public Schools with Trenton Arts at Princeton as part of PUC’s Neighborhood Music Project. The quartet will engage Trenton Central High School orchestra students in a 60-minute concert-conversation.

Tickets for this concert ($25-40 General/$10 Students) are available online at puc.princeton.edu, by phone at (609) 258-9220, or in person 45 minutes prior to the concert at the Richardson Auditorium box office.