Faure/ Amara Piano Quartet - Amara Piano Quartet Plays Faure

With this release, the Amara Piano Quartet follows up it's successful debut album, "American Piano Quartets," with it's first foray into the standard repertoire. The Faure C minor Piano Quartet and it's less well-known cousin the G minor Quartet are among the unquestioned masterpieces for piano quartet. The Amara brings it's unique perspective as one of the world's few regularly constituted piano quartets to this important repertoire. The Amara Piano Quartet is the resident chamber music ensemble at Iowa State University. It's members include Boro Martinic, violin; Jonathan Sturm, viola; George Work, cello; and Mei-Hsuan Huang, piano. Innovation joins tradition as the Amara Piano Quartet rises anew from the brilliant history that defined it's predecessor, the Ames Piano Quartet. The ensemble chose the name "Amara" to send a message that is new yet classic, that combines a sense of mystery and timelessness with a beautiful sound. It is a name that, in the great literature and languages of the past, had associations with mythic paradise, with immortality and the eternal, and with something beloved. Like the new name suggests, the quartet will continue to perform for it's audiences the immortal, beloved music of the past while it looks also to commission new compositions to become the masterpieces of the future.