- violin
Maciej Burdzy
- violin/viola
Christina Gallati
- violin
Agata Lazarczyk
- viola
Katrin Burger
- violoncello
Samuel Niederhauser
Program
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Giovanni Bottesini (1821–1889)
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Gran Quintetto for string quintet in C minor op. 99 (1858)
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Johannes Brahms (1833–1897)
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String Sextet No. 1 in B flat major op. 18 (1860)
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Giovanni Bottesini, whose 200th birthday was in December 2021, is probably the most famous double bass player in music history. After training on the violin and viola, he entered the Milan Conservatory at the age of 13. However, as there were only places available for bassoon and double bass, the talented boy was forced to switch from the violin to the double bass. He was never to regret it, as he soon embarked on a career as a traveling double bass player, which took him to Havana in Cuba, Mexico and the USA. He also went down in music history as the conductor of the world premiere of Verdi’s opera “Aida” in Cairo. In addition to his busy instrumental career, he also found time to compose – preferably for his own instrument, of course, especially as there was hardly any serious solo literature for double bass at the time. In addition to a dozen operas, he wrote several double bass concertos, eleven string quartets and several string quintets, including the relatively famous Gran Quintetto in C minor. Bottesini wrote it in Naples in 1858 and dedicated it to his friend and composer Saverio Mercadante. It is an extremely lively and energetic work, alternately brooding and mysterious.
Johannes Brahms began his chamber music career with string quartets, but he later destroyed these early works as evidence of a lack of maturity. His first pieces of pure string chamber music to be published were his two string sextets op. 18 and 36. Although publishers were initially skeptical as to whether compositions in this rather rare genre would sell, the sextets became a great success. Alongside the “German Requiem”, they were the ones that helped the young Brahms make his breakthrough. While he himself later disparaged them as “long, sentimental pieces”, they still fascinate audiences today with their irresistible appeal and melodic beauty. In the B flat major Sextet op. 18, composed between 1858 and 1860, the lyrical melodies, mostly played by the first cello, are combined with echoes of the “folk tone”, as the Romantics called the stylization of pieces based on the model of folk music. In the first movement, for example, there is a transition between the first and second themes in the distant key of A major, which has the character of a waltz scene. The second movement is a series of variations on an archaic theme in D minor. On the one hand, it refers back to the baroque form of the folia (an Iberian dance music), on the other hand, it has a Hungarian sound character. The last two movements, on the other hand, correspond to the classical formal conventions of a Beethovenian scherzo and a leisurely rondo. The exuberant fullness of the wistful string melody is certainly the main characteristic of the B flat major sextet – blossoming landscapes of sound that can probably only be achieved in a string sextet with the help of two cellos.