Quatuor Modigliani

Wonderfully different - Bold colour accents embedded in portraits with clear, confident strokes, their sober elegance penetrating to the essential: the painter Amedeo Modigliani was a character with bold visions. The four alumni of the Paris Conservatory could hardly have chosen a more fitting namesake when they formed an ensemble in 2003 that today ranks among the world's most sought-after string quartets. Harald Eggebrecht early on hailed the Quatuor Modigliani in the "Süddeutschen Zeitung" as a "wonderfully different quartet, vital, alive" and possessed of "sonorous, Dionysian earthiness". Over its now more than twenty-year success story, the ensemble has more than lived up to all high expectations.

The programme opens with Mozart's Adagio and Fugue in C minor, KV 546 - a work of unusual severity and expressive power. The dark, shadowed-dramatic soundworld and the contrapuntal density of the fugue reveal Mozart from a serious, concentrated side. Entirely different colours unfold in Claude Debussy's String Quartet in G minor, op. 10. Shimmering sound surfaces, refined rhythm, and the characteristic cyclic form unite the four movements into a richly textured, atmospherically abundant soundscape - a key work of French modernism. The programme concludes with Ludwig van Beethoven's late String Quartet, op. 132, whose middle movement the composer himself titled "A Holy Song of Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Divinity" - a work of spiritual depth and existential concentration.

Programme:
Mozart, Adagio and Fugue for String Quartet in C minor, KV 546
Debussy, String Quartet in G minor, op. 10
Beethoven, String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, op. 132