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The Catalyst Quartet<\/a>, formed in 2010 by the Sphinx Organization<\/a>, serves as a catalyst for a more inclusive and inviting classical music experience. A core part of their mission is expanding the concert repertoire and restoring voices that have been silenced over the years. In 2018, the Catalyst Quartet launched their \u201cUncovered\u201d recording series<\/a> to spotlight the string quartets of Black composers, starting with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Florence Price. The third volume, devoted to American composers Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still and George Walker, was nominated for a 2024 Grammy award<\/a>, but their most recent release is even more ambitious.\u00a0<\/p>\n The fourth volume in the \u201cUncovered\u201d series presents the complete string quartets of Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, possibly the most remarkable French musician of the late eighteenth century. His story was told in the 2022 film \u201cChevalier,\u201d<\/a> but even that barely scratched the surface of his accomplishments. Born on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe in 1754, he was the son of a French plantation owner and an enslaved woman. His father, Georges Bologne de Saint-Georges, raised Joseph as his own and even sent him off to Paris for his education. There, Joseph initially excelled as a swordsman, winning a series of fencing competitions as a teenager that earned him a knighthood from King Louis XV.\u00a0<\/p>\n WPR\u2019s \u201cWisconsin Today\u201d newsletter keeps you connected to the state you love without feeling overwhelmed. No paywall. No agenda. No corporate filter.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n Already a celebrity in Paris, the newly minted Chevalier de Saint-Georges embarked on a second career as a violinist, and within just a few years, he was having concertos written for him by composers like Antonio Lotti and Fran\u00e7ois-Joseph Gossec. Gossec went on to become an important early mentor, inviting Saint-Georges to join and eventually conduct his orchestra, the Concert des Amateurs. In 1778, a visiting Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stayed for a couple of months in the same apartments as the Chevalier, and it\u2019s fascinating to speculate what conversations they would have had.\u00a0<\/p>\n He certainly would have had some advice to give Mozart about appealing to Parisian tastes: Saint-Georges was already an accomplished composer in his own right by that time, as this new album from the Catalyst Quartet shows. Most of Saint-Georges\u2019s early works were for his own instrument, including more than a dozen violin concertos and almost as many symphonies concertantes. But he also wrote some of the very first string quartets of any French composer \u2014 eighteen of them, so far as we know, including his very first and very last published works.<\/p>\n The string quartet was a little different in eighteenth-century Paris, compared to Italy or Vienna. Instead of focusing on the first violin, the French-style \u201cconcertante\u201d quartets gave all four performers something interesting to do. On the other hand, they were also very short, typically with only two movements, and seemed designed to leave the audience wanting more. But even such a small canvas still left room for drama, as the opening from the third quartet in Saint-Georges\u2019s Opus 1 set shows:<\/p>\nUnderstanding Wisconsin, Together.<\/h2>\n