Chamber concert: String quintet

CHAMBER CONCERT: Brass Quintet

Featuring works by Johann Sebastian Bach, George Frideric Handel, Kevin McKee, Leonard Bernstein and others.From our brass quintet’s music cabinet! Compositions for brass chamber ensemble were a rarity in Bach and Handel's day. It was not until the late 19th century that the brass band emerged, becoming particularly popular in America. This new trend meant that the previously neglected brass players were finally able to shine in works written especially for them. Our quintet has unearthed a range of exciting arrangements and breathtaking originals for this entertaining chamber concert – featuring roses without thorns, trees that fall in love, and horses made of steel!

Chamber concert: Piano quintet

This programme is inspired by a world of romantic feelings: Brahms had been tinkering with the composition of a quintet since 1862 – at a time when he was continually fragile due to failures and said despondently: »When you go on 30 and feel weak like I do, you like to lock yourself up and look at the walls in your sadness«. Nevertheless, he became self-confident, exercised, learned Latin and felt, »I'm growing!« Moreover, the Hamburg-born composer moved to his adopted home of Vienna, where he lived near the Prater and could drink his wine »where Beethoven used to drink it«. In 1864, he finally finished the piano quintet, about which his soulmate Clara Schumann raved: »I feel after the work as if I had read a great tragic story.« The remarkable composition captivates with a plethora of original thoughts that are artfully developed – it is also filled with a profound seriousness in long parts. Elgar‘s moving piano quintet also bears witness to a similar state of mind: it was composed in 1918/19 at a time when his life was overshadowed by worries, illnesses, fears and the loss of loved ones in the wake of the horrors of war. Despite his great fame in London, the highly sensitive composer retreated to the countryside to find a break from the world's noise – to which he soon had nothing more to say in music: he wrote only a few works, such as the piano quintet. Even though it sounds at times belligerently agitated, a gloomy mood and a sheer overwhelming nostalgia spreads again and again as a witness to his broken soul – after all, he noted at the time: »Everything comforting and hopeful in my life is irretrievably over«.

CHAMBER CONCERT: String Sextet

In this concert, our musicians will present two major works for string sextet. When his Sixth Symphony was to be printed in 1809, Beethoven decided on the title “Pastoral Symphony or Memory of Country Life”. In this atmospheric work, he created a yearningly imagined world of nature – as already expressed in the title of the first movement: “Cheerful feelings awake upon arriving in the countryside”. The score contains both birdsong and a musical thunderstorm. The version for string sextet was written by Beethoven’s contemporary Michael Gotthard Fischer, and is sure to win listeners’ hearts with its fascinating combination of rich symphonic sound and the characteristic transparency of chamber music. The “Pastoral” will be followed by a masterful piece by Tchaikovsky, who was often at odds with the world around him. His works often trace the eternal cycle of becoming and passing away – and not just the changes of nature, but also the associated shifts in mood of the human psyche. Thanks to the financial support of his (pen) friend Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky was able to gain fresh strength and inspiration on numerous trips – including to Florence in 1890, a journey from which his famous sextet derives its flowery name. Its character is largely cheerful, setting it apart from the melancholy Tchaikovsky’s other gloomier compositions. Echoes of guitars and themes taken from folksong conjure up the memory of Italy – and Tchaikovsky provided the performers with helpful instructions: the first movement is to be played “with great passion and verve”, “the second lilting. The third whimsically. The fourth cheerfully and assertively."

Chamber concert: String quartet

This will be an emotionally powerful chamber concert centred around works that are close to the hearts of our four orchestra musicians. One of the composers will be on the podium himself: Gabriele Campagna has been a member of the Bamberg Symphony since 2022, but the violinist is a multi-talented musician who not only plays several instruments, but also passionately composes. His »Three Pieces« for string quartet are brand new and exciting music. Janáček’s magnificent first string quartet is entitled »Kreutzer Sonata« after Tolstoy’s novella, also taking a bow to Beethoven’s work of the same name and, in his words, revolving around »a woman, desperate, grief-stricken, exhausted to death«. He composed it in just one week in 1923 with almost searing vigour, driven by his love for Kamila Stösslová, 38 years younger than him: »note for note« fell »into his pen, glowing«. As a wonderful interlude, there is composing women’s power: the exciting artist Caroline Shaw was explicitly inspired by Haydn’s outstanding last string quartet in 2011, from which she quotes and catapults the whole into the musical world of the 21st century with »ludicrous, delicate, colourful transitions« – until a fading cello solo symbolises only the »memory of fragments of an old melody«. Finally, the dramatic quartet sounds of Schubert’s famous piece from 1824, a year of sorrow for him. It took its thematic material and name from his song of the same name to a poem by Matthias Claudius – and the central variations follow the poetic dialogue between »Death and the Maiden«. A thoroughly harrowing work, but as Schubert once said encouragingly: »Whoever loves music can never be completely unhappy.«

Chamber concert: String quartet

A concert with impressive string quartets – because our orchestra members love to regularly step out of the big orchestra apparatus and work intensively on works close to their hearts as chamber musicians. And the first one is a real piece of work, according to contemporaries even »as incomprehensible as Chinese«, to which the composer rumbled the words »Cattle! Donkeys!«: Beethoven’s magnificent fugue op. 133 – a highly unique late work from 1825 that goes to the limits of what was possible, with monumental architectural structures and, despite some friendly tunes, with enormous inner tensions. One of the pieces to be rediscovered in this programme comes from the beloved homeland of our concertmaster: Ilian Garnetz grew up in a creative environment – and was awarded the title of »Artist of the Moldavian People« as a music mediator and representative of his country. Now, together with his fellow musicians, he would like to introduce the Bamberg audience to the fourth string quartet by his former violin professor and composer Boris Dubosarschi. It was influenced by the work of Shostakovich – with which the concert ends on a stirring note: His string quartet No. 8 was composed in 1960, during which he reflected on the destruction of the city of Dresden during the war in 1945. It expresses his shock at this and was published »in memory of the victims« of that time. However, Shostakovich felt that this subjective work of confession with its own quotations from his pieces could also be dedicated to his own commemoration – and also mentioned that it was »of such a pseudo-tragic nature that I shed many tears while composing it.«

Chamber concert: String sextet

Remarkable leaps and bounds for the chamber music playing that our orchestra members love: Borodin was actually a full-time chemist and physician, but his passion for music constantly rekindled, including from 1859 in Heidelberg – where he composed his romantic string sextet in D minor. Some time later, he returned to Russia and the work was lost. It did not turn up for almost 100 years until it was finally discovered in an antiquarian bookshop. And it may still be missing something, as it consists of just two movements – one of which seems to shimmer like Mendelssohn’s »Midsummer Night’s Dream« and the other is laced with folk songs from Borodin's homeland. Dvořák’s sextet, premiered in 1879, also bubbles along folkloristically, which has to do with its chronological proximity to his famous »Slavonic Dances« and emphasises his image as a »Bohemian musician«. Although this was only one aspect of his multifaceted personality, Dvořák loved the cheerful and colourful environment around him, where people liked to celebrate festivals. His work quickly became one of the classics of the genre – and also inspired Schönberg to write his string sextet »Verklärte Nacht« in 1899. It is based on a poem by Richard Dehmel, saying: »There is a glow around everything, you drift with me across a cold sea, but a warmth of your own flickers from you into me, from me into you.« Schönberg found a poetic voice here that reflected his aesthetic stance – and an impressive love story that defied the moral standards of the time. He created a late romantic musical world for this – and the composition is one of his most popular pieces of chamber music today.

Ensemble Tamuz: Schubert's String Quintet

The Sunday Morning Concert brings you wonderful and much-loved compositions, performed by top musicians from the Netherlands and abroad. Enjoy the most beautiful music in the morning! You can make your Sunday complete by enjoying a delicious post-concert lunch in restaurant LIER.The Royal Concertgebouw is one of the best concert halls in the world, famous for its exceptional acoustics and varied programme. Attend a concert and have an experience you will never forget. Come and enjoy inspiring music in the beautiful surroundings of the Main Hall or the intimate Recital Hall.

Cancelled: CHAMBER CONCERT String Quartet

"There is no higher purpose of art than to kindle in man that desire which frees his entire being from earthly torment and elevates him to such heights that, raising his head proudly and joyfully, he is able to behold the divine, indeed comes into contact with it." This statement was made by a well-known literary character – the talking dog Berganza, whom E.T.A. Hoffmann engaged in an intense conversation one night in a Bamberg park over 200 years ago. In the spirit of Goethe’s well-known description of the string quartet as “four sensible people talking with one another”, the “four sensible people” of our Berganza Quartet, which emerged from our orchestra’s ranks, have now been engaged in a musical conversation for 20 years, their line-up unchanged. The ensemble will kick off this concert with some entertainingly ironic pieces by Britten that were first performed in 1936. These Divertimenti were inspired by youthful pastimes: the march represents sports, the waltz depicts a party, and the burlesque is all about mischief in general. Shostakovich, who often suffered under his country’s changing politics, composed his Fourth String Quartet in 1949 but held it back until after Stalin's death – for while it certainly contains sensual, elegiac passages, there are also plenty of the idiosyncratic, grotesque moments so typical of this composer. In 1824, Schubert wrote despairingly to his brother that he had had "the fatal recognition that reality is miserable, although I am trying to beautify it as much as possible by means of my imagination (thank God)." This crisis resulted in a rush of creativity, in which Schubert produced works such as the forlornly melancholy A minor quartet. This quartet is captivating despite its bleakness, quoting the lyrical "Rosamunde" theme from Schubert's own incidental music, and containing echoes of his setting of Schiller's poem "The Gods of Greece”, which contains the line: "Beautiful world, where art thou?"

Wind Quintet

Chamber Concert

Composed in 1785, Mozart’s K 478 was his first contribution to the piano quartet genre. The emotionality of the opening movement’s minore key and the subtly wrought dialogue between strings and piano proclaim its high artistic standards. No less brilliant is the Piano Quartet composed 100 years later by the young Richard Strauss. In his youthful élan he vacillates between engagement with romantic models (especially Brahms) and harbingers of his own style. The ennoblement of the clarinet as a chamber music instrument takes us back to Mozart. To the present day, many works owe their existence to the challenge of blending its timbre with the strings. The same is true of Veress’s Trio of 1972 and Penderecki’s Quartet of 1993, whose elegiac finale also pays tribute to Schubert’s C major Quintet.