Göteborgs Konserthus On Stage: New String Quartet

Event has already taken place

There is no better beginning than Haydn, the Austrian who practically put the string quartet on the map. His music always livens things up, and No. 67 from 1799 is no exception – the final quartet, named after the commissioner, Prince Lobkowiz, who was also friends with Beethoven. If we take a leap 200 years into the future, the string quartet as a phenomenon has expanded in all dimensions, freed from earlier epochs’ restrictive rules and trendy taste limitations.

Sofia Gubaidulina’s second string quartet is a searching, buzzing being that seems to swarm around itself, making furious attacks when the debate gets heated – not to be trifled with! A different world to Schubert’s, where music was a romantically coloured adventure, filled with emotions, gestures, and stories. In Death and the Maiden, you can take him literally when the maiden gasps following death’s frightening line: “Give me thy hand, you fair and tender creature!”