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The Ebene Quartet Powers Through Mendelssohn

The Paris-based Quatuor Ebene — the "Ebony Quartet" — has risen fast in the musical world with two separate artistic identities. In recent years, audiences have gotten to know the "other" Ebenes — the sophisticated cover band that plays everything from "Miserlou" (the Pulp Fiction theme) to jazz to "Someday My Prince Will Come" (yes, the one from Disney's Snow White).

But when violinists Pierre Colombet and Gabriel Le Magadure, violist Mathieu Herzog and cellist Raphaël Merlin play classical music — whether Beethoven's transcendent Op. 131 quartet or, as on their latest recording, works by brother-and-sister composers Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn — you realize the depth and beauty of vibrantly intense performances.

Felix Mendelssohn completed his String Quartet No. 6 in F Minor just two months before his own death, and very shortly after the death of his beloved sister Fanny. Even though this second movement, marked Allegro assai, is architecturally the "light" section in this piece, it's full of dark colors, tense and moody and shaded with grey and black. The music provides rich counterpoint to the setting, the bright and spacious powerHouse Arena, a bookstore, gallery and performance space in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood.

We thought that the setting would appeal to the quartet's double identities, given powerHouse's signature mix of art titles and whimsical children's selections, including a board book with a cute little piglet that clearly fascinated Raphaël to no end. And our idea worked: The shoot was bookended, so to speak, by the quartet browsing and buying. Maybe our idea worked a little too well? No matter — once the quartet got down to playing, the results were magical.

Producers: Mito Habe-Evans, Anastasia Tsioulcas; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Tim Adams, Mito Habe-Evans; Special Thanks to: powerHouse Arena; Executive Producers: Anya Grundmann, Keith Jenkins.

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

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Anastasia Tsioulcas is a reporter on NPR's Arts desk. She is intensely interested in the arts at the intersection of culture, politics, economics and identity, and primarily reports on music. Recently, she has extensively covered gender issues and #MeToo in the music industry, including backstage tumult and alleged secret deals in the wake of sexual misconduct allegations against megastar singer Plácido Domingo; gender inequity issues at the Grammy Awards and the myriad accusations of sexual misconduct against singer R. Kelly.