Quatuor Arod / Alexandre Tharaud

Together, they whisk the audience away for a brief time to a realm far removed from earthly realities – with Gabriel Fauré’s imaginative Piano Quintet. Music, in Fauré’s eyes, served one purpose above all: to transport people as far away as possible from ordinary day-to-day life. He certainly delivers on that here, with playful garlands of notes on the piano and delicate string tones that literally float in the air and induce a dreamlike state.

In stark contrast to this are the worldly string quartets in the first half of the concert: Claude Debussy’s only string quartet was written to the backdrop of the »Exposition Universelle«, the world’s fair held in Paris in 1889. Besides the spectacular opening of the new Eiffel Tower and a giant oak barrel full of champagne, it also played host to a wealth of cultural attractions. Among these was a Javanese gamelan orchestra, whose unusual sounds left clear traces in Debussy’s string quartet.

Another French composer partial to combining Western and Eastern elements in his music is Benjamin Attahir. In his work »Al Asr« for string quartet, first performed in 2017 by Quatuor Arod in Paris, he captures the atmosphere of a Muslim afternoon prayer.