David Petrlik, violin
Yoan Brakha, violin
Hortense Fourrier, viola
Rémi Carlon, cello
While Mendelssohn’s first and last quartets, Op. 13 and Op. 80, were written in periods of imbalance, the three Op. 44 quartets are born in a happy period for the recently married composer. Here we hear Mendelssohn’s taste for measured, light music in the legacy of Mozart’s quartets. The pieces in this opus work in threes, as do Beethoven’s Razumovsky, written thirty years earlier. While Mendelssohn followed the tradition for string quartets, the latter intended to disrupt the codes and invent his own path. The conquest of this new style is achieved through the brilliance of sometimes brutal sonorities, through tonal and formal surprises, and through the use of counterpoint without regard for the references of the past. The same iconoclastic approach was to be found in the twentieth century when Webern composed his Six Bagatelles, which are among the shortest works in Western music. The concern for maximum concentration with a construction based on two- or three-note motifs led Schoenberg to say that “these pieces will only be understood by those who believe that one can only express with sounds what can be expressed with sounds. This is a challenge worthy of the Elmire Quartet, winners of numerous international prizes including the Rheingau Music Festival prize in Weikersheim and artistic director of their own Festiv’Elmire festival at the Salle Cortot!
Program :
Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Quartet in E minor, Op. 44 No. 2
Anton Webern, Six Bagatelles, for string quartet opus 9
Ludwig Van Beethoven, Quartet No. 9 in C major Op. 59 No. 2 Razumovsky
