Quatuor Ébène

Several years ago Quatuor Ébène made a fantastic recording of Béla Bartók’s first three string quartets. So this French four-man team has a reputation to maintain when it comes to the revolutionary chamber music of this Hungarian composer. In this concert the ensemble will be taking up the thread again with Bartók’s Fourth String Quartet, whose radical chromatics, fitful rhythms and bold timbre exercises make it one of his most progressive compositions.
Mozart’s Sixteenth String Quartet is also a fine example of musical modernism. Like the ‘Dissonance Quartet’, this work is one of the six quartets Mozart dedicated to Joseph Haydn in 1785. And new harmonic horizons are explored in this work too. The highly chromatic motif in the opening bars speaks volumes.
Robert Schumann wrote his oeuvre following a clearly delineated plan. In 1840-41 he almost exclusively composed songs, whereas 1842 is synonymous with chamber music. This German composer lunched into this period with his three quartets opus 41, of which the third is probably the best loved.