Quatuor Danel

String Quartet

Sunday Concerts

April 30, 2017, 4 PM

Music Room

Quatuor Danel will make their DC debut with selections by Mendelssohn, Weinberg, and Shostakovich.

Program

Formed in 1991, the Quatuor Danel has been acclaimed for its fresh and exciting interpretations of the classics, its dedication to new music, and its passionate advocacy of two great Russian composers: Shostakovich and his friend Mieczysław Weinberg, including complete recorded cycles of both composers’ string quartets. While Shostakovich’s quartets are well known, this concert provides a rare opportunity to hear Weinberg’s Quartet No. 3, a work of magnificent concentration and intensity composed in 1944.

PROGRAM:

FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1805-1847)
String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, Op. 80 (1847)
     Allegro vivace assai
     Allegro assai
     Adagio
     Finale: Allegro molto

MIECZYSŁAW WEINBERG (1919-1996)
String Quartet No. 3, in D minor Op. 14 (1944)
     Presto attacca
     Andante sostenuto attacca
     Allegretto

Intermission

DIMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH (1906-1975)
String Quartet No. 3 in F Major, Op. 73 (1946)
     Allegretto
     Moderato con moto
     Allegro non troppo
     Adagio
     Moderato

About the Artists

Marc Danel, Gilles Millet (violins) – Vlad Bogdanas (viola) – Yovan Markovitch (cello)

The Quatuor Danel was founded in 1991 and has been at the forefront of the international music scene ever since, with important concert performances worldwide and a row of groundbreaking CD recordings winning many important international awards. The quartet is famous for their bold, concentrated interpretations of the string quartet cycles of Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Shostakovich, and Weinberg. Their lively and fresh vision on the traditional quartet repertoire has delivered them subsequent praise from public and press. The other part of their force lies in the collaboration with major contemporary composers such as Rihm, Lachenmann, Gubaidulina, Dusapin Jörg Widmann and Bruno Mantovani.

Russian composers have a special place in the Quatuor Danel’s repertoire. They have championed all string quartets by Shostakovich and recorded the complete cycle for Fuga Libera in 2005. This box-set was recently re-issued and still counts as one of the benchmark interpretations of Shostakovich’ quartets. Over the past three years the Quatuor Danel has recorded the almost unknown quartet oeuvre of Mieczyslaw Weinberg, the neglected contemporary of Shostakovich, for CD-label CPO. The quartet will continue to break a lance for this breathtakingly beautiful repertoire coming seasons.

At the very heart of the Quatuor Danel’s work lies their ambassadorship for young musicians in general and string quartets in particular. Teaching and master classes are a fundamental part of their activities. The quartet has been artist-in-residence at the University of Manchester since 2005, working closely with the students, but also with musicologists Barry Cooper and David Fanning.

The quartet’s current concert diary will take them to the major concert halls in Brussels, Amsterdam, Moscow, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Berlin, Milano, Beijing, Taipei, Tokyo and New York, but they are also comfortable when playing in lesser known intimite venues. Quatuor Danel is a regular guest at festivals such as Ottawa, Kuhmo, Cork, Schleswig-Holstein, Alpen Festival, Bregenz, Lüzern Zaubersee,Fayence, Lubéron, Montpellier, Enescu Festival (Bucharest), Ars Musica and Musica Mundi.

Upcoming recording projects of the Quatuor Danel will consist of the three Tchaikovsky quartets, Piano Quintet by Franck and a longer term project with the late Beethoven.