Danel Kwartet

The Danel Quartet's programme is an obviously ambitious one. Together with the three composers Anton Webern (1883-1945), Helmut Lachenmann (b. 1935) and Wolfgang Rihm (b. 1950), they explore and go beyond the limits of the string quartet. It is no surprise that the curator Luc Van Hove has included Anton Webern's Fünf Sätze opus 5 and Sechs Bagatellen opus 9 in the festival. After all this time, Webern's music (the only works in this 3-day festival from before 1945) continues to beguile. In addition, the two quartets contain in a nutshell all the major developments of his later writing for string quartet: attention to stillness, to the smallest possible elements with the greatest possible expression, first experiments with unconventional playing techniques, and the relationship between sound and noise. In short, all those parameters which Rihm and Lachenmann, to name just two, continued to develop.