Silesian Quartet / Artur Rozmysłowicz Generation '51 on their 70th birthday - NOSPR

Beethoven was Andrzej Krzanowski’s favourite composer. According to his wife, Grażyna, he would virtually never put his symphonies’ scores aside.

In his String quintet (with two violas), Beethoven follows into W.A. Mozart’s footsteps, thus following one who had elevated the genre to new heights (his Quintet in G minor, K. 516 closed our last season). Having written his op. 18, i.e. a cycle comprising of his first six string quartets, which he had been struggling with for as long as 18 months, Beethoven reaches for a larger string ensemble, thus ‘symphonising’ the sound of a chamber ensemble, simultaneously aiming for independence of each voice. The wide-spanning sound (sometimes as many as five octaves) shows Beethoven the way to the Razumovsky Quartets from op. 59.

After this ‘nearly symphony’, Andrzej Krzanowski’s Relief IX “Scottish” will seem to the listener to be a most oneirically-sounding piece. The layer of computer tape introduces the listener to the ‘music of the celestial speheres’, and maybe Beethoven holds conversation with Krzanowski there...?

Duration of the concert: approx. 70 minutes