CANCELLED: Aris Quartett / Rising Stars

It all began as an experiment at the Frankfurt College of Music, where four highly musical young people met, and then matured in the next ten years into one of the biggest hopes among the young generation of string quartets. The Aris Quartet has already walked off with a whole number of major prizes, including no fewer than five awards at the ARD Music Competition. They already made an appearance at the Laeiszhalle six years ago; tonight they open the »Rising Stars« festival with a colourful programme.

»What absolutely has to be said« - thus the essence of György Kurtág’s bafflingly brief and extremely condensed pieces can be summed up. And the 15 miniatures of his string quartet »Officium breve in memoriam Endre Szervánszky« tell their tales with minimal resources and the utmost delicacy, reminding us in the process of two other composers: Anton Webern, the great minimalist of modern music and a kindred spirit of Kurtág’s, and Kurtág’s friend Szervánszky, to whom he dedicated the quartet.

The Kurtág is followed by Dmitri Shostakovich’s deeply melancholy String Quartet No. 8, which the composer wrote as a »requiem for himself« after he had been forced to join the Communist Party. The Aris Quartet has released a recording of this work on CD which garnered the utmost praise from the critics. Tokyo-born composer Misato Mochizuki contributes a work that she wrote especially for this concert and dedicated to the Aris Quartet. The recital comes to an end with Mendelssohn’s sparkling Quartet op. 44.