20.2.2019
Kammermusik-Fest 2019 · Wiener Konzerthaus
This year’s Kammermusik-Fest invites audiences to rediscover the variety and versatility of the orchestra’s members over four evenings. Works from the Classical and Romantic periods, from string trios to larger chamber ensembles, demonstrate the greater intensity reduction can bring – subtle yet powerful, every detail in the music seems to sparkle.
“The string quartet is, to a certain extent, the quintessence of the symphony”, says the ensemble Symphony4Vienna. In that spirit, you can experience the richness of musical ideas, the love of experimentation and the peerless profundity of the symphony concentrated and reduced to four voices in the group’s concert. On the programme, three string quartets: Joseph Haydn’s String Quartet in F minor is followed by Hugo Wolf’s Italian Serenade, heard here in the original arrangement, which is now rare having been overshadowed by the version for string orchestra. The finale of the evening comprises the first of the three Rasumovsky Quartets by Ludwig van Beethoven, rightly regarded as the “Eroica of string quartets”
The opportunity to experience the musicians of the Wiener Symphoniker making music in new formations and combinations is one of the most exciting aspects of the Chamber Music Festival. Anton Sorokow, First Concertmaster of the Wiener Symphoniker, has put together a special ensemble from the ranks of the orchestra’s string players for this year’s matinee concert at the Chamber Music Festival. Supported by the First Solo Violist and the First Solo Cellist of the Wiener Symphoniker, he presents a programme that brings together Schubert’s Trio in B flat major, Dvorák’s Terzetto in C and Mendelssohn’s Octet for Strings.
Concert
For almost 45 years the Wiener Kammermusiker have been such an important chamber music ensemble that it’s not possible to imagine Austrian and international musical life without them. At their concert they present a lively string quartet by Haydn followed by a work by Bernhard Crusell in which, unexpectedly, a clarinet plays the “first violin” part. The concert concludes with Dvorák’s “Czech Suite”, whose folkloric and romantic splendour is aurally reimagined in this version for chamber ensemble.
Rare and surprising finds can be heard at the concluding concert of this year’s Wiener Symphoniker Chamber Music Festival: in addition to seldom heard works, there are also unusual sound combinations to discover. Along with one of Johannes Brahms’s late sonatas for clarinet and piano are “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen” and “Auf dem Strom”, two of Franz Schubert’s final works with a soprano voice that anchors them deeply in the Lied form. The evening concludes with the four-movement Trio for Oboe, Horn and Piano by Carl Reinecke, which draws on Romanticism in all its aspects.
