Alan Gilbert on the viola: together with the Elphier Quartet, the trained violinist and violist performs works by Schubert, Britten, Bruch and Schulhoff in the Elbphilharmonie’s Small Hall.
Johannes Brahms, an early admirer of Bach and Beethoven, only discovered his love for Schubert relatively late. He felt it all the more intensely – and the more the Austrian composer eventually rose in his esteem. For many years, he was an unofficial contributor to the first major Schubert complete edition – and in this way became a profound connoisseur of Schubert’s works.
Johannes Brahms, an early admirer of Bach and Beethoven, only discovered his love for Schubert relatively late. He felt it all the more intensely – and the more the Austrian composer eventually rose in his esteem. For many years, he was an unofficial contributor to the first major Schubert complete edition – and in this way became a profound connoisseur of Schubert’s works.
Shostakovich’s Eighth String Quartet in C minor is one of the composers most personal works. There are striking allusions to Wagner’s »Götterdämmerung« and Tchaikovsky’s confessional symphony »Pathétique«. But Shostakovich also immortalised himself, with themes from earlier works as well as the musical code D-Es-C-H. The piece was composed in 1960 during a visit to Dresden, which was destroyed in 1945. The horrors of the destruction shocked Shostakovich so much that he dedicated the quartet to the victims of war and fascism.
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