Biography

Erika Geldsetzer  -  violin
Sascha Frömbling  -  viola
Konstantin Heidrich  -  cello
Dirk Mommertz  -  piano

The Fauré Quartett was founded in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1995, the 150th anniversary of the birth of composer Gabriel Fauré. In the three decades since then, the founding members are all still in the group, which has established itself as one of the world’s leading chamber ensembles and as one of the few for the instrumental combination of piano, violin, viola, cello. The Quartett has appeared in most of the world’s leading concert halls, including Amsterdam’s Concertgebouw, London’s Wigmore Hall, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, the Berlin Philharmonie, and the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. In addition to mainstream classics, the Fauré Quartett is devoted to discovering new and unusual repertory. In 2009, it expanded its repertory with modern arrangements of selected songs from pop history, published by the Deutsche Grammophon label under the title Popsongs. The Quartett’s visionary, experimental approach has attracted considerable attention, as for example in its collaborations with artists like Rufus Wainwright and Sven Helbig, and in appearances at clubs like Le Poisson Rouge in New York. The Quartett’s mainstream discography includes works by Mozart, Schumann, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and of course Fauré, in addition to its own arrangements of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition and Rachmaninoff’s Etudes-Tableaux. 7th LMMC appearance.

https://faurequartett.de/en/home-english/

Notes

“Who?,” is likely to be the reaction of nearly every concertgoer this afternoon upon encountering the name Mel Bonis. Most of us would assume this was a man. But “Mel” was born (Paris, 1858) as Mélanie Hélène Bonis, and because women at the time were not taken seriously as composers, at the age of eighteen she changed her professional name to Mel to confuse those who would otherwise have looked askance at a women composer. Saint-Saëns, upon hearing the work on today’s program, remarked “I never imagined a woman could write such music!” Bonis persisted in the face of much opposition to become in her time a successful composer of some three hundred works, mostly piano pieces, songs, choral works and chamber music. After about 1920 she slipped into almost total obscurity, from which she has only in recent years begun to emerge. The first of Bonis’ two piano quartets, premiered in 1905 (Pierre Monteux was the violist) gives ample evidence of the melodic appeal and structural integrity of her music. More information about Mel can be found at mel-bonis.com.

The third and last of Brahms’s piano quartets, each of them a jewel in the crown of the romantic chamber music repertory, was completed in 1874, about the time as the composer was working on his First Symphony with which the Quartet bears a number of parallels. Both are generally of somber cast. Outer movements are in C minor (the Symphony’s finale is mostly in C major, but contains significant passages in the minor mode). The slow movement is in E major. Both finales include chorale-like passages. And both are deeply imbued with stress and profound struggle. “Craggy, restless, made up for the most part not so much of fully formed melodic statements as of jagged, brusque ideas that tumble past the ear like tragic cries out of darkness,” is how critic Alan Rich described the Quartet’s first movement.

The second of Dvořák’s two piano quartets was premiered in Prague in 1890. The first movement opens with a muscular, virile motif presented by the unison strings, which are immediately answered by the piano with a somewhat capricious figure. These two elements of the first subject are then expanded into a magnificent presentation, after which follows a more lyrical second subject, announced by the viola. The second movement is in the rarely-used key of G-flat major (six flats in the key signature!) and boasts no fewer than five themes. The irresistibly charming third movement exhibits the flowing grace of a waltz or Ländler. The vigorous finale again employs six flats in its key signature, now in the minor mode (E-flat minor). The music stubbornly resists return to the expected home key of E-flat major until near the end. Once again, Dvořák’s melodic gifts are strewn about in abundance, with his favorite instrument, the viola, often called into the spotlight.

Robert Markow