Spiegel String Quartet

The Hungarian composer Gyula Bankövi (1966) wrote his quartet 'The Gate of Hell' for a combination of string quartet and electronics. His source of inspiration was George Crumb's 'Black Angels'. Bankövi is a particularly talented and original creator of quartet sounds: oppressive icy ambient music and screeching violins are his trademark. Spiegel had a great success with 'The Gate of Hell', and they decided to commission Bankövi for a new project. We also get the opportunity to hear a new work by the young Flemish composer Hans Roels (1971). He describes his music as a kind of 'unstable border area between music and sound, order and chaos'. His compositions seem constantly about to disintegrate. We await the premieres of these two new works with bated breath. Although as a young man he was regarded as an impossible avant-gardist, it steadily became clear that Prokofiev (1891-1953) belonged to the same great Russian musical tradition as Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky. His first quartet had its première in Washington in 1930. Proof that Prokofiev steeped himself in Beethoven's quartets can clearly be heard.