ON THE RADAR: The Ying Quartet

Friday, April 15. Featuring LifeMusic Commissions-Pierre Jalbert, “Iceberg Sonnets”; Brahms, “Piano Quintet in F minor, Op. 34”; Beethoven, “Quartet in F Major, Op. 18, No. 1.” Featuring Melvin Chen, soloist. 8 p.m. Paine Hall. Admission free and open to the public. Free passes available at the Harvard Box Office.

For several years now, Harvard students and faculty haven’t been able to get enough of one musically talented family whose repeated campus performances continue to move audience members to tears, if not to the melody. I am, of course, talking about the Ying Quartet, the world’s only professional family string quartet and Blodgett Artists in Residence since 2001. (Those of you who guessed the von Trapp family might just want to read on.)

Giving two different types of free performances this week, the Ying siblings (violinists Timothy and Janet Ying, violist Phillip Ying, and cellist David Ying) have without a doubt achieved their mission to bring a bit of live classical music to college students, who might otherwise just have kept on bobbing their heads to Luda, 50, or another new B.S. (read Britney Spears) song on their iPods.

“We work not only for the people who study music but for all of the University,” said Timothy in a recent interview.

First playing on Monday for a small crowd at University Hall, the Ying Quartet will have another, longer performance at Paine Hall tonight at 8 p.m. The program includes Brahms’s “Piano Quintet in F minor” with soloist Melvin Chen, Beethoven’s “Quartet in F Major,” and “Ice Sonnets,” a LifeMusic Commissions piece by Pierre Jalbert.

Tonight’s chamber music concert will also be the quartet’s last in residence this semester, concluding the foursome’s year-long series of performances. But the four will be back in the fall to give three performances at Paine Hall, one at the Houghton Library, and perhaps a few more at Mather and Leverett Houses, where the intimate ambience is ideal for chamber music.

“We really enjoy performing in all kinds of settings,” said Phillip. “We love the interaction with the professors and students,” added Timothy. “We seem to get back as much as we give.” Perhaps this spirit of reciprocity is why the Yings are hooked on Harvard just as much as Harvard is hooked on them.

—Michaela De Lacaze