ERRATUM : CHANGE OF TIME OF THE CONCERT INITIALLY PLANNED AT 8PM WILL TAKE PLACE AT 8.30PM.
Kaya Kato Møller, violin
Nikolai Vasili Nedergaard, violin
Daniel Sledzinski, viola
Signe Ebstrup Bitsch, cello
A competitor in the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition 2022 for Denmark, Novo Quartet was founded in 2018 in Copenhagen. Since then, it has won several international prizes, including this year’s double first prize-audience prize at the International Competition of the Irene Steels-Wilsing Foundation in Heidelberg. For this return to Bordeaux, Kaya Kato Møller, Nikolai Vasili Nedergaar, Daniel Śledziński, and Signe Ebstrup Bitsch oppose two worlds. On the one hand, Mendelssohn’s first published quartet, closely following Beethoven’s death on 26 March 1827. References and formal inspirations from the Viennese master punctuate this piece between nostalgia and enchantment, all Mendelssohnian, up to the final meditation in A major. The poles are reversed with Bartók’s Quartet No. 4, in which he continues his explorations of rhythm, tonality, polyphony and timbre. In a form conceived as a palindrome, the Hungarian melodies carried by the cello give way to the demonic prestissimo, and then to the colours of Arab music in the final allegro. The unheard-of sonorities of the new panoply of stops, glissandos, vibratos, pizzicatos, harmonics, and bridge playing, make this quartet a miniature laboratory of the musical revolutions of the 20th century.
Program :
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, String Quartet in A minor, Op. 13 No. 2
Béla Bartók, Quartet No. 4
