This is one in a series of student profiles to be featured in Connections. The profiles are part of a project to articulate the Viterbo difference through storytelling. Have a student story worth sharing?

The acclaimed Artaria String Quartet will present the complete cycle of 17 string quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven in six concerts in celebration of the composer’s 250th birthday Saturday, Feb. 22–Monday, Feb. 24 and Sunday, March 22–Tuesday, March 24 in the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Nola Starling Recital Hall.

The 17 string quartets of Beethoven’s monumental canon span 36 of his 57 years and represent, perhaps better than any other of his works, the revered Early, Middle, and Late periods of his compositional life. These so-called “periods” are not mere academic divisions but rather a glorious arc of Beethoven’s work. So, too, they encompass his deafness from its beginning to its final and awful silence. Within the Artaria String Quartet’s six programs of the complete Beethoven string quartets is infinite variety, combining those periods within a single performance as a most satisfying experience for the listener.