Arioso Quartett, Vogt, Wolf / Rachmaninoff, Zemlinsky

During this season's focus on Zemlinksy, the famous Ariose Quartet have devoted themselves to the composer's first string quartet. Brahms' influence here is palpable: underneath what seems to be a clear stylistic surface one soon observes rifts, even refusals, against Zemlinksy's role model. Two works by Zemlinky's contemporary Sergei Rachmaninov will be played alongside the string quartet. Artistically and sonically anchored in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, the two composers, almost the same age, are united, despite their artistic differences, by a two-pronged affair with the musical Avant Garde of their time. Zemlinsky and Rachmaninov both resound, each in his own way, the sonorities of the late romantic: although neither has dared to overstep its limits.