Program suggestions for 2025/26 season

Music as comfort

L. van Beethoven: String Quartet in F major, Op. 135
V. Ullmann: String Quartet No.3
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F. Schubert: String Quartet in G major, D887

These are Viennese composers for whom composing or listening to quartet music was a consolation at the end of their lives.
The last piece of music Schubert wished to hear (five days before his death) was Beethoven's String Quartet, Op.131 in C sharp minor. Karl Holz (the quartet's first violinist) commented: "The King of Harmony has sent the King of Song a friendly offer of passage."
Schubert was buried at his own request in the cemetery in the Viennese suburb of Währing, near Beethoven's grave. A year before his own death, he served as torchbearer at Beethoven's funeral.
Ullmann composed his last quartet in the Terezin ghetto, not long before he was taken on the "artistic transport" to Auschwitz.

Longing for home

B. Bartók: String Quartet No.6
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A. Dvořák: String Quartet in G major, Op. 106

The second programme presents two composers who find themselves on the other side of the Atlantic in completely different circumstances, both coping with homesickness. Here, Dvořák sketches his climactic Op. 106 and rejoices in his return home, while Bartók, on the other hand, nostalgically recalls his roots and harshly comments on the darkness of war.

The weight of fate

B. Smetana: String Quartet No.2
B. Britten: String Quartet No.3
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F. Mendelssohn: String Quartet in F minor, Op.80

The third programme brings together three pieces composed in a situation of great physical or psychological difficulty, which clearly no longer has a way out. Smetana composes his second string quartet deaf and suffering from frequent hallucinations, Britten is exhausted by illness and dies the evening before the premiere of his quartet, and Mendelssohn, struck by the news of the untimely death of his beloved sister Fanny, composes his quartet Op.80, but on his first visit to his sister's grave he has a mental breakdown and dies five weeks later.