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DR
QUATUOR ÉBÈNE / LAHAV SHANI
Mozart, Schnittke, Dvořák
Quatuor Ébène won a 2023 Gramophone Award® for its Mozart String Quintets. Here it performs the first of his brightly melodic ‘Prussian’ quartets, before joining forces with Lahav Shani for Dvořák's similarly brightly songful Piano Quintet No. 2 – punctuated by Schnittke’s dark Third String Quartet.
Programme
WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756-1791)
String Quartet No. 21 in D major K. 575
ALFRED SCHNITTKE (1934-1998)
String Quartet No. 3
Interval
ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841-1904)
Piano Quintet No. 2 in A major Op. 81
Distribution
- Quatuor Ébène
- Lahav Shani conductor, piano
Mozart’s graceful, melodic String Quartet No. 21 is the first of his three ‘Prussian’ quartets, written for King Friedrich Wilhelm II of Russia, and thus making much of the king’s own instrument, the cello – particularly so in its scherzo third movement and the ensuing finale. Schnittke’s three-movement String Quartet No. 3 of 1983 opens on on a 16th century quote, from Orlando de Lassus’s Stabat Mater, followed by one from Beethoven’s Grosse Fugue, then Shostakovich’s DSCH motif. These then form the linking motivic threads through the remainder of the quartet, set within a darkly melancholic, often angry sound world of eerie glissandi, and slides between ancient and modern, tonality and atonality. By contrast, even when the four movements of Dvořák’s vibrantly singing, Czech-folk-infused Quintet of 1887 (opening on a cello solo) switch to the minor, the effect is either just exhilarating, or sweetly nostalgic.