"We put a lot of contrast," said celloist Tanja Tetzlaff, the sister of Christian Tezlaff. "It's a mix of highly intelligent blending of folk music."
Christian Tetzlaff will perform in Hanover with his Tetzlaff String Quartet, which includes violinists Elisabeth Kufferath and Hanna Weinmeister. The group was formed in 1994 at a German music festival, after the artists were matched up to play a quartet piece together. They have since performed on the international and national stage.
Tanja Tetzlaff, who has three older siblings with professional music careers, said she practiced rigorously from a young age to continue the family trend.
Now she plays internationally for several German orchestras, including the Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.
Weinmeister is the first concertmaster at the Opera Zurich Orchestra in Switzerland and Kufferath received the IBLA Foundation's Distinguished Musician Award.
"They are playing one of my favorite pieces of all time, Beethoven's Opus 132," Hop programming director Margaret Lawrence said.
The quartet's performance will begin with Haydn's string quartet in C major, a piece traditionally associated with the rise of the quartet music genre.
While most acts are soft, easing the audience into the performance, Haydn's piece will jolt the audience with its dynamic, chaotic fluctuations.
Next in line is Beethoven's string quartet No. 15, which is so beautiful that it is difficult to play the way it should be played, Lawrence said.
The piece revolves around Beethoven's struggle with sickness, and requires absolute delicacy to get the emotion right. Bartok's string quartet No. 4 will close the show, which Hop publicity coordinator Rebecca Bailey noted is full of "crazy special effects, pings, pounds and slides."
"It's hard to play something a lot of people know," Lawrence said. "Beethoven's piece is so exposed; it's slow so you hear everything that happens in a very transparent way. It's a very deliberate balancing act."
The quartet's fame has been propelled by Christian Tetzlaff's success.
"I saw him when he was very young and I know he was going to be a performer," Lawrence said. "Many performers try to show you how virtuosic they are. He refuses to go for the cheap thrills. He goes into the actual soul of the music. There's just something more about him."
Because the quartet members' individual careers have left them busy, the group has only sporadically performed together in recent years, making their Dartmouth appearance even more special.
"They're not like other performers who might have 100 shows in one season," Lawrence said.
Despite their less frequent performing schedule, Christian Tetzlaff said that they "sit together and talk and drink all the time."
Tetzlaff said he finds that the joy of his profession comes from playing music with the people that he loves, adding that the group's lighter schedule has helped make their friendship stronger.
"The quartet is something so special," Tetzlaff said. "Nothing can come close to that."
The Tetzlaff String Quartet will perform on Friday in Spaulding Auditorium at 8 p.m.
