Silesian String Quartet / Concert cycle: The Strange and the Curious (4) - NOSPR

This is the 12th seasons  when the Silesian String Quartet is curating its original concert cycle at the NOSPR. The current edition, entitled The Strange and the Curious, will take us on a diverse and surprising musical journey. It is devoted to works that are rarely performed, strikingly unconventional, and distinctive in character. Each of them opens a new chapter, often turbulent in its history and always unusual in form and timbre. Over the course of five concerts, the audience are invited to discover fresh perspectives on the string quartet, including settings that extend the ensemble with additional instruments.

This concert promises to be one of striking contrasts as we will set out on a journey from the world of the classical music, through military sonorities, and into regions that verge on pop. At the opening stands a work of the utmost importance in Ludwig van Beethoven’s oeuvre, a composition that continues to astonish with its bold harmonic and formal solutions even today. The piece in question is The Great Fugue of 1825, originally conceived as the final movement of String Quartet in B flat major, Op 130, but later separated at the publisher’s request and issued independently as Op 133. With its abundant contrasts, dissonances, and unorthodox handling of thematic material, the work posed formidable challenge for performers from the very beginning. It may still come as quite a surprise to concert audiences today, especially if they are accustomed to the traditional form of the string quartet.

Beethoven’s piece, for all its force, will be only a gentle opening to further surprises in store this evening. The Silesian String Quartet’s concert will also allow us to discover the sense of humour of the great German neoclassical composer Paul Hindemith. As a composer who avoided no musical idiom, Hindemith took it upon himself to create a six-movement work modelled on military music over the course of merely two July days in 1923. Here the string quartet imitates the sonorities of wind instruments, while march-like episodes alternate with plaintive melodies. Hindemith appears to wink at his audience: nothing here is entirely serious. Yet the most exuberant spirit of dance will come fully into its own in the final work. Rosen aus dem Süden – a compilation of Johann Strauss’s waltzes as arranged by Arnold Schoenberg – demonstrates that even the master of dodecaphony was not always solemn. The classical sound of the string quartet will be enriched by piano and accordion.

[Julia Broniowska]