Hyeyoon Park / Timothy Ridout / Kian Soltani / Benjamin Grosvenor
Piano quartets by Bridge, Fauré and Brahms
A very special piano quartet
These internationally sought-after soloists usually play with orchestras around the world – but today they are coming together as a very special piano quartet: cellist Kian Soltani, who has already given several guest performances at the Elbphilharmonie and Laeiszhalle, violist Timothy Ridout, who was awarded the first Sir Jeffrey Tate Prize of the Symphoniker Hamburg in 2020, and the violinist Hyeyoon Park and the pianist Benjamin Grosvenor, who also regularly perform together as a duo.
Their programme features Johannes Brahms’s Piano Quartet No. 1, whose final movement – a »Rondo alla zingarese« – is an expression of the Hamburg composer’s great love of Hungarian folk music. Brahms crafted these driving rhythms, stylised melodies and the ludicrously fast csárdas finale so finely that even his Hungarian composer friend Joseph Joachim ungrudgingly admitted that Brahms had given him a »sound thrashing« on his own territory – high praise indeed!
Before that, the musicians perform works by the British composer Frank Bridge and the Frenchman Gabriel Fauré, both of whom described their music in terms of the »fantastical«: Bridge, in that he called his work a »Phantasy«, and Fauré in that he repeatedly emphasised that his music was written to take people as far away as possible from their everyday lives.
Performers
Hyeyoon Park violin
Timothy Ridout viola
Kian Soltani violoncello
Benjamin Grosvenor piano
Programme
Frank Bridge
Piano Quartet in F-sharp minor, »Phantasy«
Gabriel Fauré
Piano Quartet No. 1 in C minor, Op. 15
– Interval –
Johannes Brahms
Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor, Op. 25
Encore:
Robert Schumann
Andante cantabile / aus: Klavierquartett Es-Dur op. 47
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Chamber Music at the Laeiszhalle