Kreutzer Quartet

The Pharos Arts Foundation presents the Kreutzer Quartet in all-Beethoven programme, on Thursday 26 March, at The Shoe Factory. Having forged an enviable reputation as one of Europe’s most dynamic and innovative string quartets, the Kreutzer Quartet regularly appears at many of the leading Festivals around the world and has established creative partnerships with numerous contemporary composers. For their concert in Nicosia, the Kreutzers will trace Beethoven’s musical evolution, from his early beginnings and the Haydn infused Op.18 quartets, all the way to his highly Romantic A minor, Op.132 quartet, written two years before the composer’s death. The programme will also include a transcription for sting quartet of Beethoven’s Bagatelles for piano Op.119, by British composer David Matthews.

KREUTZER QUARTET

The Kreutzer Quartet has forged an enviable reputation as one of Europe’s most dynamic and innovative string quartets. They regularly appear at many of the world’s leading Festivals, including the Venice Biennale and Warsaw Autumn. They are the dedicatees of numerous works, and over many years have established creative partnerships with composers including Sir Michael Tippett, David Matthews, Michael Finnissy, Judith Weir, Luca Francesconi, Poul Ruders and Haflidi Hallgrimsson. They have a particularly strong relationship to a cross-section of leading American composers, having collaborated intensively with the great George Rochberg in the last few years of his life, as long as working closely with figures as Elliott Schwartz, and the prolific symphonist Gloria Coates. As recording artists they have won critical acclaim for their discs on the Naxos, Metier, and Chandos labels. They are Artists in Association as Quartet at York University, and at Wilton’s Music Hall. Their work in collaboration with art galleries and museums has garnered much attention, and large audiences, particularly their annual residency at the Tate Gallery, St Ives.

All four of the quartet members are individually renowned as soloists. Violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved is the dedicatee of well over 200 works for solo violin. His extensive discography ranges from cycles of sonatas by Beethoven and Telemann, the complete quartets of David Matthews, Michael Tippett, and cycles of concerti from Haydn to Henze. He has won awards from the BBC Music Magazine, been nominated for a Gramophone Award and was nominated for a GRAMMY for a concerto recording in 2007. He is the only British violinist to have been invited to play on Paganini’s violin and he presently plays on a 1698 Stradivari owned Joseph Joachim. Composer/violinist Mihailo Trandafilovski has performed across Europe, America, and the UK. His compositional interests lie with both instrumental and computer music, and he was recently the subject of a Portrait disc recorded by Lontano under Odaline de la Martinez. Violist Morgan Goff has collaborated with major composers in Europe and Australia and has been featured in a great number of recordings – most recently in a disc of Lennox Berkeley’s solo works for Naxos. Cellist Neil Heyde has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Europe, the USA and Australia, broadcasting for the BBC, WDR, ORF, Radio France, RAI, NRK, DR, Netherlands Radio and many other networks. He is distinguished for his ground-breaking film, under the composer’s supervision, of Ferneyhough’s notorious Time and Motion Study.

THE PROGRAMME:

“BEETHOVEN: BEGINNINGS, BAGATELLES AND ENDINGS”
String Quartet in F major, Op.18, No.1 (1798)
Bagatelles Op.119 (1822) Transcribed for String Quartet by David Matthews World Premiere
String Quartet No.15 in A minor, Op.132 (1825)

Beethoven’s opus 18 quartets are his earliest compositions for the medium, written in the closing years of the 18th century, when he was in his late twenties. The 1790s were a period of dense chamber music productivity for the composer: he composed about two dozen important chamber works in these few years, including his early piano trios, five string trios, some early violin sonatas and cello sonatas, and the popular Septet. It would, nevertheless, be impossible not to compare the opus 18 quartets to the mature quartets of Joseph Haydn and Mozart, and innumerable critics, musicologists and historians have certainly done so. The young Beethoven was briefly the counterpoint student of Haydn, who wrote his most celebrated quartets just a couple of years before the opus 18 were written; and Beethoven was certainly acquainted with some of Mozart’s greatest quartets. The Op.18 quartets, particularly No.1 in F major, have Haydn’s stamp deeply imprinted on them, in respect to their geniality, innovation and wit.

It is generally believed that a few of the Bagatelles for Piano, Op.119 date back to the 1790s, perhaps to as early as 1793. Some of these Bagatelles in their original sketch form may have been intended as movements for a piano sonata, while others may have had roots in other projected keyboard compositions before Beethoven shelved them. The Op.119 Bagatelles have been arranged for string quartet by David Matthews. Born in London, in 1943, Matthews is considered one of the most prolific composers of our time. His is known for his close association with Benjamin Britten and the Aldeburgh Festival, and his music has been influenced by the Tippett, Britten and Maw generations of English composers - notably their ecstatic melodic writing and vibrantly expanded tonal harmony. But underlying this deceptively 'English' surface, and coming increasingly to the fore in recent works, is a concern for large-scale structure that connects rather to the central European tradition, back through Mahler and ultimately to Beethoven. Although he has written a fair amount of vocal music and seven symphonies, Matthews's output as a whole is centred on the classical instrumental and orchestral forms. His series of (to date) twelve string quartets is one of the most distinguished that any composer has essayed in recent years.

Beethoven completed Op.132 in October 1825 after a long recuperation; the music is directly related to his illness and recovery. Although it is not specifically programmatic, its progression from darkness to light, similar to the Fifth and Ninth Symphonies, is evidence of the "habitual state of the mind of the composer: the fight against destiny, the triumph of joy over pain."

Tickets:
€15 / €10 Concessions & members of the Pharos Arts Foundation,
Box Office: Directly from the Foundation’s website www.pharosartsfoundation.org/ or Tel. 96669003 (Monday - Friday 10:00am-3:00pm)