Takacs Quartet

Takács Quartet plays the Perelman Theater at the Kimmel Center on Wednesday, January 20, 2027, at 7:30 PM. It's their annual Philadelphia appearance, part of the Julian and Lois Brodsky Chamber Music Series presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society. This one is a bit of a milestone for the group: it's their first concert with new Romanian-born cellist Mihai Marica.

The program puts Gabriela Lena Frank's Quijotadas alongside quartets by Mozart and Beethoven. Quijotadas is folk-inspired and takes its cue from the story of Don Quixote. The Mozart is the Quartet in F Major, K. 590, and the Beethoven is the Quartet in C Major, Op. 59, No. 3, known as the Razumovsky. The Mozart and Beethoven pieces were written only sixteen years apart, and hearing them in the same evening makes that gap feel smaller than it sounds—it's a good way to hear how fast the string quartet changed around the turn of the 19th century.

Takács is a world-renowned ensemble that recently hit its fiftieth anniversary, a milestone that earned them a New York Times profile and the cover of Strad magazine, as well as two anniversary season albums on Hyperion Records in 2025. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette critic once called them "no finer ensemble in the world, expressively and technically."

If you want a bit of context before the music starts, there's a pre-concert talk by Zev Kane at 6:30 PM in Comcast Circle. Tickets are $30, and the show is currently sold out with a waitlist available. The concert is part of the Brodsky series, presented by the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society with the support of Julian and Lois Brodsky.