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From 19 to 21 May 2022, the chamber music festival "Music in the Giant" in Wattens is dedicated to the string quartet in its various forms, pays tribute to the art of song and gives space to the piano as a solo and accompanying instrument. Once again, renowned virtuosos such as the pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the Belcea Quartet, young stars such as the baritone Andrè Schuen, the composer and musician Caroline Shaw and the Attacca Quartet from New York as well as the Tyrolean newcomers Quartissimo will be on stage.
Two violins, a viola, a cello - the wealth of music that composers create from the interplay of these four instruments is endless. Music in the Giant" 2022 will show how diverse the approaches to the string quartet are with exemplary examples. Each of the three guest quartets in Wattens, the Belcea Quartet, the Attacca Quartet and Quartissimo, has a different focus.The Belcea Quartet, one of the most renowned chamber music ensembles in the world, combines various European musical traditions. Its repertoire ranges from the key works of the classical and romantic periods to the (premiere)°performance of contemporary works. In the almost 20-year history of "Music in the Giant", the Belcea Quartet has already been a guest several times. This time, it will set the string quartet movement in C minor and the string quartet in D minor "Death and the Maiden" by Franz Schubert in relation to Dmitri Shostakovich's penultimate string quartet from 1973.
The New York Attacca Quartet represents a young, hip, yet virtuoso generation of musicians who attach little importance to genre boundaries. At the festival in Wattens, the four string players will play pieces by their musical companion Caroline Shaw and perform them together with her. The composer, violinist and singer, who was the youngest winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2013, is coming to Austria for the first time for a guest performance. She compares her works to a garden in which she cultivates plants - an apt metaphor for the complexity of a music in which the most diverse influences take effect and new things can grow. Shaw's tonal language is unmistakable - poetic, delicate, then again rhythmically powerful and rich in colour - and at the same time always connected to music history through quotations or allusions.
The third string quartet at "Music in the Giant" is also the youngest. Founded in 2016 by the siblings Hannah Alber (violin) and Jonas Alber (viola) as well as Clara Spieler (violin) and Emil Spieler (cello), Quartissimo has already won several awards. At "Music in the Giant", the four young Tyroleans will not only perform at an international festival, they will also prepare for it in the master class programme "Impuls" with violist Krzysztof Chorzelski of the Belcea Quartet. He will work with them on the "American String Quartet" by Antonín Dvořák and the String Quartet in F minor op. 80 by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy.
Mendelssohn's last quartet, which is often interpreted as a requiem for his sister Fanny Hensel, and the String Quartet No. 14 by Dmitri Shostakovich, in which he remembers two deceased musicians and friends, point to the second thematic bracket in the festival programme: music in its existential dimension. It connects the string quartet focus with the opening concert by Pierre-Laurent Aimard and the recital by Andrè Schuen and Daniel Heide. The French pianist Aimard chose late pieces by Franz Schubert and works by György Kurtág for his recital. Among the works to be heard are pieces from his life's work "Jatékok", a piano cycle that the Hungarian composer has continued to write since 1973.
At the end of the festival, baritone Andrè Schuen and pianist Daniel Heide will perform songs of the night and farewell. Schuen is considered one of the best lied and opera singers at the moment. In Wattens he will demonstrate the expressiveness and beauty of his voice with music from the Romantic and Modern periods. Songs by Franz Schubert are at the beginning and end, Gustav Mahler's "Kindertotenlieder" and songs by Erich Wolfgang Korngold complete this evening of night pieces and funeral songs.
Thursday, 19 May 2022, 8 pm: Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)
Friday, 20 May 2022, 8 pm: Attacca Quartet, Caroline Shaw (voice)
Saturday, 21 May 2022, 11 a.m.: Belcea Quartet
Saturday, 21 May 2022, 5:30 pm: Quartissimo
Saturday, 21 May 2022, 8 pm: Andrè Schuen (baritone), Daniel Heide (piano)
Introductory talks one hour before the start of each concert
Magdalena TrojerSenior Communications ManagerT +43 5224500-1032press.kristallwelten@swarovski.comkristallwelten.com/presse