Spotlight: On the Weekend Ahead
February 2, 2003
By Mark Stryker, Free Press music writer

Despite a rising reputation in Europe and several U.S. tours, France's Debussy Quartet remains something of an unknown quantity on the Yankee side of the Atlantic. The buzz surrounding the group's previous performances and recordings suggests an ensemble of finesse and emotion coupled with an imaginative interpretive flair - but the only way to know for sure is to hear the group in person, which you can do Tuesday thanks to the Cranbrook Music Guild.

One thing that's certain: The program is especially promising. Included are a seminal Haydn quartet (Op. 33, No. 2); Leos Janacek's Quartet No. 1 ("Kreutzer"), an extraordinary re-creation of a Tolstoy novella of love and adultery, and Dmitri Shostakovich's Quartet No. 9 in E-flat, not one of the composer's better-known quartets but an intriguing transitional work pointing toward his bleak and highly personal late style.

8 p.m. Tuesday , Christ Church Cranbrook, Cranbrook and Lone Pine roads, Bloomfield Hills. $30; $15 students. 248-644-6352.