Dance and Quartet:
- Three Ballets with accompaniment by string quartet
Back in the 1800’s, when entertainment was all in live form, musicians and composers created combinations of instruments to provide entertainment. That led to the creation of the piano trio (Piano + violin + cello), as well as the creation of the string quartet (Two violins, + viola + cello).
Hundreds of years have passed, and this DVD shows us a new, creative combination that consists of dancers who add a visual dimension to music composed for the string quartet.
The selections we hear are as follows:
Dvorak:
- String Quartet No. 12 in F major, Op. 96 ‘American’
In Spillville
Soloists: Sarah-Jane Brodbeck, Tigran Mikayelyan
Janacek:
- String Quartet No. 2 ‘Intimate Letters’
Lettres Intimes
Soloists: Seh Yun Kim, Arsen Mehrabyan
Schubert:
- String Quartet No. 14 in D minor, D810 ‘Death and the Maiden’
“Der Tod Und Das Mädchen”
Soloists: Yen Han, Arsen Mehrabyan
Performed by the Hagen Quartet: Lukas Hagen (1st violin), Rainer Schmidt (2nd violin), Veronika Hagen, (viola), Clemens Hagen (violoncello), with the ‘Zürcher Ballett’
Live Recording from The Felsenreitschule, Salzburg Festival, 2012
The Salzburg Festival presented a unique production in 2012: the renowned Hagen Quartet appeared together with the Zürcher Ballett. The Swiss grand master of dance Heinz Spoerli created three works for his Zurich Ballet set to three of the greatest works of the string-quartet literature: Leos Janáček’s string quartet “Intimate Letters”, Antonín Dvořák’s “American Quartet” and Franz Schubert’s string quartet “Death and the Maiden”.
Based in Salzburg, the Hagen Quartet is highly popular with the public for its high standard of musicality, serious artistic approach and its enthusiastic love of playing. This is a triumph on home ground for this renowned ensemble.
Here is a very old recording by the very young Hagen Quartet of Schubert’s String Quartet in D minor ‘Death and the Maiden’ . (You can see that the second violin is not yet played by Rainer Schmidt, who joined the group later)
http://youtu.be/Fv6c22-XSvY
And next, here is the Dvorák ‘American Quartet’ as performed by the Prazak Quartet :
Tags: Hagen Quartet , Zürcher Ballett, Schubert, Janacek, Dvorak