Quatuor Modigliani

Vim and vigor - "It is not difficult to compose, but it is fabulously difficult to let the superfluous notes fall under the table," Johannes Brahms wrote to a friend while he was working on his first two quartets op. 51. Or rather: on the first published ones, as around twenty attempts had allegedly been thrown away. It is therefore all the more interesting that in 1875 - after successfully completing the mammoth task of a first symphony - the third quartet op. 67 came quite easily to him. "It is no longer a matter of being born with pliers; it is just a matter of being there," he reported to the dedicatee of the work, the doctor Ulrich Engelmann. Perhaps it inspired Brahms to look less to Beethoven's monumental model this time and more to Viennese Classicism à la Haydn and Mozart?

Nevertheless, Beethoven is not neglected in the Quatuor Modigliani concert: even though his Opus 59 was decried as the "patchwork of a madman", the "Razumovsky Quartets", known by the name of their noble dedicatee, no longer frighten anyone today. While the length of the works was irritating at the time, it was the brevity of Anton Webern's works around a century later: shortly before, the Schönberg pupil still had one foot in late romanticism, but in 1909 he completely opened the door to modernism with his radically short five string quartet movements.

This courage to adopt its own style suits the Quatuor Modigliani wonderfully - it is not for nothing that it is named after a highly idiosyncratic painter. Although they have been touring internationally since 2003, youthful vigor and fresh enthusiasm are still among the trademarks of the four French musicians. And so the quartet already proved at its Albert debut in 2020 that it not only has a flair for the Viennese, but is also an ensemble that "is of solitary greatness even in the high-class chamber music landscape of the present day." (Badische Zeitung)

Program:
MADE IN VIENNA
Webern, Fünf Sätze für Streichquartett op. 5
Brahms, Streichquartett Nr. 3 Bb-Dur op. 67
Beethoven, Streichquartett Nr. 8 in E minor op. 59/2 "Razumovsky"

Quatuor Modigliani

EUR 59,- / 47,- / 34,- incl. fees

Quatuor Modigliani | Photo © Stéphanie Lacombe