Evening Concert

Sunday December 29 | 20:00 hr

Boris Brovtsyn  Violin Janine Jansen  Violin  Violin  Violin Amihai Grosz  Viola Timothy Ridout  Viola Daniel Blendulf  Cello Jens Peter Maintz  Cello  Cello

Presenter: Ab Nieuwdorp

 

Shostakovich Octet, Op. 11

Webern Langsamer Satz

Schulhoff Five Pieces

interval

Schubert String Quartet in d minor, ‘Death and Maiden’

A concert in which also the musicians from the ‘New Generation’ present themselves as an ensemble. And what is a better way to do so than with Shostakovich’ Octet? After all, it is also a youth work: Dmitri Shostakovich was barely nineteen when he completed it. And although the Russian’s DNA is unmistakably in it, you also recognise Shostakovich’s great example Bach in it. Webern’s Langsamer Satz also looks back. Without dedain, commentators called it a shrivelled Mahler symphony, or Wagner’s Tristan in eleven minutes! The Satz is clearly rooted in the tradition of Brahms and Strauss. The Five Pieces by the then 29-year-old Erwin Schulhoff are wonderfully chameleonic. They swing from the Viennese waltz via a serenade and a Czech episode to Argentina, and conclude with a Sicilian tarantella, the fast dance with which people thought they could fight the bite of the tarantula spider. Schubert was also 29 when he composed his ‘Death and Maiden’. This last string quartet of his takes its name from the second movement. In this movement Schubert quotes his own song of the same name in order to build up an impressive series of variations with it.