Kako YAMADA, violin
Hiromi FUTAMURA, violin
Sakuya WATABE, viola
Miu ISHIZAKI, cello
The Thaleia Quartet present a family programme built around the close relationship between Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. When Mendelssohn composed her first quartet, she asked her brother to revise it. Of the four hundred scores left by the composer, this is the only one devoted to the four-piece formation. It was intended to remain a private work, a context that perhaps paradoxically allowed Fanny Mendelssohn greater formal freedom. Between the notes, we hear allusions to Felix, with excerpts from the Quartet op. 12 and the orchestral overture Mer calme et heureux voyage. When Fanny died in 1847, Félix composed the Quartet op. 80 as a replica of this loss, in the geological sense of the word, expressing all his pain in tormented music shot through with flashes of light. There is no trace here of the fairytale scherzos, but rather the nightmare of a devastated Mendelssohn. Les Thaleia, winners of the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition and Vibre!’s fourth ensemble-in-residence, will also be performing Felix Mendelssohn’s Four Pieces for Quartet, linking the works and lives of these two siblings.
Program :
“Brother and sister”
Fanny Mendelssohn, String Quartet
Felix Mendelssohn, Four pieces for String Quartet opus 81
Felix Mendelssohn, String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, opus 80
