The Wave Quartet

The Paramount Quartet

Featuring Joe Lovano (saxophone), Julian Lage (guitar), Santi Debriano (double bass), and Will Cahoun (drums), the new Paramount Quartet—formed in early 2024—has burst onto the scene with a distillation of jazz as adventurous as it is vigorous.

Arditti Quartet / The quartet and modern masterpieces / cancelled

The Arditti Quartet is a chamber music legend. Half a century ago, the violinist Irvine Arditti invited three friends of his, students at London’s Royal Academy of Music, to perform Krzysztof Penderecki’s String quartet No. 2 together. Since then, the ensemble has premiered hundreds of contemporary pieces, released over 200 albums and traveled all the world with new music. The Arditti Quartet will perform a 20th-century masterpiece by Witold Lutosławski, music by Lucia Dlugoszewski, an American composer with Polish roots who is still little known here, and a piece by James Dillon, the quartet’s collaborator since the 80s. Adam Suprynowicz Concert duration: approximately 100 minutes

Classical Highlights: String Quartet Classics with the Karski Quartet

For lovers of chamber music the Recital Hall is the venue of choice. You can hear the musicians breathe and you can practically touch them. This hall is also cherished by musicians for its beautiful acoustics and direct contact with the audience. In the Recital Hall you can hear the best musicians of our time. Buy your tickets now and experience the magic of the Recital Hall for yourself!

Festival of Premieres / Silesian Quartet / NeoQuartet / The Changing Sound of the Quartet

Two quartets and two different types of sound: the acoustic and the electronic. What will be the outcome of this juxtaposition and what will result from the intertwining of tradition with modernity? This will be an evening filled with experiments and sonic exploration. In the satirical We Have a Problem by Dominik Strycharski, two quartets will meet in asynchronous dialogue, blended with picture and electronic beat. Ewa Trębacz will recall the mood of the Quay brothers’ films and that of Bruno Schulz’s short stories. The algorithmically processed sounds of her Nostalgia will be situated somewhere between sentimentalism and paradox. Olga Hans, in turn, will return to a Festival of Premieres from many years ago, when it was also the Silesian String Quartet who performed a composition of her own. me-mo-traces is a trace of emotions evoked by that memory. There will also be no dearth of emotion in No Quarter, in which Hubert Gabriel Żmudzki paints a picture of the contemporary world filled with a sense of anxiety and threat, threats that are, indeed, common in the most recent works of Polish composers. Chaos and fragmentation are also dominant aspects of Joanna Woźny’s piece Echi dell’Informe. In its entirety, it is constant movement, an attempt at finding order in disorder. Shapes are intertwined with shapelessness and tangible structure is interwoven with an amorphous sonic mass.We can also find interesting inspirations in Monika Szpyrka’s Conchoidal and Marcel Chyrzyński’s Mindscape No. 1. While the former references the term used in mineralogy to describe a specific type of break in a brittle material, the latter directs a fascinated gaze towards Japanese gardens, which create peaceful, static, “mindscapes”. It was the poetic nature of the term that inspired him to create the, highly personal, chamber pieces.How will this mosaic of sonic concepts be complemented by the aleatoric games found in Aleksandra Gryka’s Q for a string quartet? This concert will certainly surprise us more than once. [Julia Broniowska]

Turicum Quartet / Menuet of the witches

Joseph Haydn has been called “Papa Haydn”, both affectionately and pejoratively. Meanwhile, he was a composer whose mastery and unpredictability went hand in hand. Let us appreciate the emotional glimmering of the music, its surprising turns, sense of humour (the “menuet of the witches” quite unlike the court dance), or the finale inspired by music of the Romani people living in the borderlands of Austria and Hungary, where the composer spent most of his life. The spirit of Austria-Hungary is also referenced – already after the fall of the dual monarchy – in the modernist parodying miniatures by Erwin Schulhoff, who enhanced them with motifs of his native Czechia. Even though Szymanowski knew the capital of Austria-Hungary, he did not like it; his String Quartet No. 1 represents a different direction, as Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz wrote: “Never before has any of his works breathed such a scorching air of the South; not the heat of the Sicilian south or the mourning of the Greek heat, in which Pan’s flute kills hearts – but the juicy and ripe heat which smells like the crops of Ukraine.” Adam Suprynowicz Concert duration: approximately 60 minutes

Barbican Quartet

The Barbican Quartet was founded in 2015, and is taught and supported by string quartet stars like Günter Picheler and the Quatuor Ébène. The four musicians present works by Alban Berg and Beethoven as part of the »Teatime Classics« series. 2022 was a memorable year for the Barbican Quartet: they won first prize and other special prizes at the ARD Music Competition, as well as a third prize at the Bordeaux International String Quartet Competition. The ensemble had only just found a new second violinist, and thus a new sound and style of ensemble playing, in February 2022. The Barbican Quartet has appeared at many international festivals, and has been broadcast on the radio several times. In the 2022/23 season, they produced and released their first CD. An extensive tour will take them to different parts of Europe, to Canada and the USA.

Critics’ Quartet

Moderated by Olaf Wilhelmer, four critics will once again discuss a central work this year: in 2024 it will be Aaron Copland’s 3rd Symphony.The “Critics’ Quartet” takes place instead of the usual introduction to the concert with the Kansas City Symphony conducted by Matthias Pintscher.

Belcea Quartet

Takács Quartet

Beethoven's quartets dedicated to the Russian ambassador in Vienna, Count Razumovsky, are some of his most famous. The first of the three is majestic in its scope, filled with both carefree melodies and tension-filled contrasts.When it comes to string quartets, Joseph Haydn was a role model and important source of inspiration for Beethoven, and there's a musical thread from Haydn's C major quartet to Beethoven's Razumovsky quartets.The ensemble tackling this music, the Takács Quartet, was founded in Hungary but is now based in the USA. They are known for their brilliant playing and innovative programs. They often collaborate with writers and artists, and at several concerts, the actress Meryl Streep has participated.The Takács Quartet also commissions music. One such initiative is the beautifully flowing Flow by American composer Nokuthula Ngwenyama, who has looked out towards space and drawn inspiration from the Big Bang and the expansion of the universe.