Biography

Sara Bitlloch  -  violin             
Donald Grant  -  violin   
Simone van der Giessen  -  viola        
Marie Bitlloch  -  cello

“Few quartets at any stage of their evolution have this much personality,” claimed the Washington Post of the Elias String Quartet. Formed in 1998 at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, the Quartet took its name from Mendelssohn’s oratorio, Elijah (Elias in German), and quickly established itself as one of the leading lights of the younger generation of string quartets. In 2009, it was a recipient of a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award. With the support of the Trust, the Elias Quartet mounted The Beethoven Project, studying and performing all of Beethoven’s string quartets as cycles while sharing their experience through social media and a website (www.thebeethovenproject.com). The project culminated with performances at Wigmore Hall, where all six concerts were recorded live for the hall’s own label. The final volume of their complete Beethoven quartet cycle was recently released. The ensemble’s discography also includes quartets by Mendelssohn and Schumann, as well as piano quintets by Schumann and Dvořák with pianist Jonathan Biss. First LMMC appearance.

Notes

The quartet that opens this afternoon’s concert is one of the last Haydn composed (1799) in a catalogue that numbers nearly seventy. There are folk dance elements in three of its four movements (the Adagio movement is the exception). ‘Many of the motifs’ writes Melvin Berger, are ‘endowed with great directness of expression and simplicity of means, [and] are treated with Haydn’s own sophisticated, learned compositional approach.’

Mendelssohn’s Quartet Opus 13 is called No. 2, but it was in fact his first (not counting an even earlier, unnumbered composition). It is an astonishingly mature work for an eighteen-year-old. In it we find the powerful influence of Beethoven’s late quartets. This influence can be seen in the advanced harmonic language, tightly-knit counterpoint, recitative passages and use of motivic fragments for developmental purposes.

In its vast range of emotions, forms, tonalities, tempos and textures,
Beethoven’s C-sharp minor quartet bears comparison with a Mahler symphony. Of its seven movements, only the first and last are in C-sharp minor, acting as giant pillars upon which rests the huge central movement, which is in turn flanked by two shorter movements on both sides, one a brief, recitative-like passage, the other a fully-fledged movement in fast tempo. The work is further characterized throughout by a kaleidoscope of contrasts. Beethoven himself regarded this quartet as his greatest, an opinion sustained by many today.

Robert Markow