The Lutheran Church will resound with Dmitri Shostakovich’s poignant final work, performed by violist Timothy Ridout and pianist Denis Kozhukhin. Shostakovich composed his Sonata in C major for viola and piano in the summer of 1975, during his last stay in hospital. It was his last completed work, laboriously written down while his health was rapidly deteriorating. The sonata is dedicated to Fyodor Druzhinin, violist of the renowned Beethoven Quartet, the ensemble with which Shostakovich collaborated intensively for many years.
Due to Shostakovich’s illness and the awareness of his approaching end, this sonata took on a distinctly introspective and sombre character. He deliberately chose the viola as the voice of human melancholy. The first movement sounds sombre and lonely, while the Scherzo at times still leaves room for optimism and hope. The focus is on the slow finale, in which Shostakovich looks back on his life and pays a final tribute to Beethoven, one of his greatest examples. In the reference to Beethoven’s famous Mondschein Sonata, melancholy and a deep longing for warmth and humanity resound. As in the previous movements, the final bars slowly fade away — a symbolic farewell from the composer.
For the programme in the Nicolaïkerk, Janine Jansen has invited a number of promising young musicians from the new generation, who will also be performing on other days during the festival. Kazakh violinist Ruslan Talas and South Korean cellist Jaemin Han will open the programme with a selection from Johann Sebastian Bach’s two-part Inventions. Bach wrote them for novice keyboard players to improve their technique and musicality. Each invention is in a different key and has its own character. Although these pieces were originally written for keyboard, they are surprisingly well suited to string instruments: the two-part harmony is sometimes even more clearly audible, and the contrasting sounds of the violin and cello add extra colour to the different characters.
The Scandinavian ensemble Opus13 Quartet plays a contemporary composition for string quartet by Britta Byström. This Swedish composer is known for her expressive and colourful style, which often translates theatrical or literary sources of inspiration into intimate, refined chamber music and works for orchestra. Images From the Floating World, written for the Taïga String Quartet, is inspired by the Icelandic Njal’s Saga, which revolves around blood feuds, conflicts and friendship in medieval Iceland. The suite of six short movements is full of unusual sound effects and is imaginative and – except in the swinging fast movements – meditative.
The route of the Church Marathon ends in the Geertekerk, with a starring role for French clarinettist Olivier Patey. It was a close call, but the Clarinet Quintet in B minor was never composed. Johannes Brahms had already announced that he would stop composing when he became friends with Richard Mühlfeld, the principal clarinettist of the court orchestra in Meiningen. Fascinated by his playing, Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann: ‘No one here can play the clarinet more beautifully than Herr Mühlfeld […] he is the best player I know, […] the nightingale of the orchestra’. This exceptional musician persuaded Brahms to write a few more compositions for clarinet: the Clarinet Quintet, the Clarinet Trio, Opus 114 and the two Sonatas, Opus 120.
The melodious Clarinet Quintet has been popular with both musicians and audiences since its premiere in 1891. Even before it was printed, an alternative version was written with viola instead of clarinet, performed by the legendary violinist Joseph Joachim and approved by Brahms himself. The original version with clarinet has a melancholic and introspective character, strongly coloured by the warm, slightly lower timbre of the A clarinet and the key of B flat minor. Brahms alternates lyrical restraint with virtuoso, expressive passages, with the clarinet playing a connecting role.
