Lukas Hagen, violin
Rainer Schmidt, violin
Veronika Hagen, viola
Clemens Hagen, cello
The Hagen Quartet is one of those legendary quartets founded in the 1980s. Gathered around a brotherhood, they benefit from thirty years’ experience of working together and a close collaboration with Deutsche Grammophon that has produced forty-five recordings. For this special concert, the Hagen brothers will bring together two mature works by Haydn and Beethoven with a score by a composer who was still a student at the Paris Conservatoire, Maurice Ravel. Ravel’s quartet, the only attempt at a four-piece formation, oscillates between the clear lines of the inter-war aesthetic and the influence of Debussy’s works. Haydn’s Quartet No. 4, Op. 76, is one of the so-called “Erdödy” quartets, named after their dedicatee. This latest series of quartets is by a musician who knows he is considered to be the greatest living composer. He smiles on his art with refinement, subversive and seductive. The fourth piece opens with an atmosphere of dawn, earning it the nickname “Aurora”, and ends in a paroxysm of speed. Beethoven’s Quartet No. 16, Op. 135, was his last quartet and his last completed work. Entitled “The Difficult Resolution”, it is astonishingly serene and classic in its architecture. At times, however, we hear harmonic flashes that hint at the centuries to come.
Program :
Joseph Haydn, String Quartet No. 4 in B flat major, Op. 76, Sunrise
Maurice Ravel, String Quartet in F major
Ludwig van Beethoven, String Quartet No. 16 in F major, Op. 135
