We are standing in a picture gallery of music. All around us we can hear snippets of the great works for string quartets, along with unfamiliar things to delight the ear; it is truly a music-lover\u2019s paradise. Chiaroscuro forms the conclusion of a rather special trilogy of albums by the Schumann Quartet and at the same time marks a journey\u2019s end.
\nAfter searching for their own roots in Landscapes and engaging with their namesake Robert Schumann in Intermezzo, the four musicians complete their trilogy with the album Chiaroscuro, which in itself represents an equally exciting journey through time and temperament.
\nBy way of Mozart\u2019s arrangements of five selected fugues from Bach\u2019s \u201cWell-Tempered Clavier II\u201d they look left and right into very different musical rooms. There are two early pieces for string quartet by Shostakovich, Philip Glass\u2019s \u201cCompany\u201d string quartet, a short fugue by Felix Mendelssohn, and the six Bagatelles op. 9 by Anton Webern. The whole promenade culminates in Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s last work, his Second String Quartet.
\n\u201cA few years ago we were even more inclined to do things \u2018the right way\u2019, or to fulfil other people\u2019s expectations of us.\u201d In recent years, the young musicians have progressively released themselves from these demands. And perfected their own. \u201cWe want our music to exist in the immediate moment, as we lose ourselves in it. For that to succeed, each of us must transcend their individual ego.\u201d Their focus is on the concert, and that is the way they have approached Chiaroscuro: \u201cWe recommend everyone to listen to the whole album from beginning to end without a break.\u201d
\nChiaroscuro \u2013 Italian for \u201clight and dark\u201d \u2013 is the name of the programme. The Schumann Quartet combines works that could not be more different. They aim to show that despite the contrasts, the differences and discontinuities between such pairs as Mozart and Webern, Glass and Jan\u00e1\u010dek, there are glimpses of common elements and evidence that many of the composers on display are brothers in spirit. It is a question of the \u201cunity that the album forms\u201d, perhaps not in spite of, but just because of the contrasts.
\nAnd when at the very end of the album, at the very end of the whole trilogy, we hear Gershwin\u2019s Lullaby, we cannot shake off the feeling that all this is such stuff as dreams are made of \u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We are standing in a picture gallery of music. All around us we can hear snippets of the great works for string quartets, along with unfamiliar things to delight the ear; it is truly a music-lover\u2019s paradise. Chiaroscuro forms the conclusion of a rather special trilogy of albums by the Schumann Quartet and at the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1279772,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"dmbid":"561784","upc":"885470012728","linkfire":"https:\/\/BC.lnk.to\/sq_chiaroscuro","ean":"","genre":"Klassik","genre2":"Streichquartett","genre3":"","copyright":"","producer":"","playtime":"4205","date":"2019-05-10","dateend":"2099-12-31","trackamount":"18","discamount":"1","artistsname":"","composer":"Leo\u0161 Jan\u00e1\u010dek|Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Dmitri Shostakovich","teammember":["1009;Schumann Quartett;1170706|1010;Leo\u0161 Jan\u00e1\u010dek;408812|1010;Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart;42158|1010;Dmitri Shostakovich;406147"],"teammemberlist":["1170706|408812|42158|406147"],"english":"
\n
\nWe are standing in a picture gallery of music. All around us we can hear snippets of the great works for string quartets, along with unfamiliar things to delight the ear; it is truly a music-lover\u2019s paradise. Chiaroscuro forms the conclusion of a rather special trilogy of albums by the Schumann Quartet and at the same time marks a journey\u2019s end.
\nAfter searching for their own roots in Landscapes and engaging with their namesake Robert Schumann in Intermezzo, the four musicians complete their trilogy with the album Chiaroscuro, which in itself represents an equally exciting journey through time and temperament.
\nBy way of Mozart\u2019s arrangements of five selected fugues from Bach\u2019s \u201cWell-Tempered Clavier II\u201d they look left and right into very different musical rooms. There are two early pieces for string quartet by Shostakovich, Philip Glass\u2019s \u201cCompany\u201d string quartet, a short fugue by Felix Mendelssohn, and the six Bagatelles op. 9 by Anton Webern. The whole promenade culminates in Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s last work, his Second String Quartet.
\n\u201cA few years ago we were even more inclined to do things \u2018the right way\u2019, or to fulfil other people\u2019s expectations of us.\u201d In recent years, the young musicians have progressively released themselves from these demands. And perfected their own. \u201cWe want our music to exist in the immediate moment, as we lose ourselves in it. For that to succeed, each of us must transcend their individual ego.\u201d Their focus is on the concert, and that is the way they have approached Chiaroscuro: \u201cWe recommend everyone to listen to the whole album from beginning to end without a break.\u201d
\nChiaroscuro \u2013 Italian for \u201clight and dark\u201d \u2013 is the name of the programme. The Schumann Quartet combines works that could not be more different. They aim to show that despite the contrasts, the differences and discontinuities between such pairs as Mozart and Webern, Glass and Jan\u00e1\u010dek, there are glimpses of common elements and evidence that many of the composers on display are brothers in spirit. It is a question of the \u201cunity that the album forms\u201d, perhaps not in spite of, but just because of the contrasts.
\nAnd when at the very end of the album, at the very end of the whole trilogy, we hear Gershwin\u2019s Lullaby, we cannot shake off the feeling that all this is such stuff as dreams are made of \u2026","imageage":[],"spotify_checked":["2bYrjVn1kYDUJ4EZx6pinP"],"age":[""],"playlist":[""],"alt_text":"","topics":[null],"footnotes":""},"categories":[181,20,63],"dmb-topic-category":[],"class_list":["post-1263688","album","type-album","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album","category-klassik","category-streichquartett","post-wrapper","thrv_wrapper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/album\/1263688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/album"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/album"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1263688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/album\/1263688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1267506,"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/album\/1263688\/revisions\/1267506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1279772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1263688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1263688"},{"taxonomy":"dmb-topic-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.berlin-classics-music.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/dmb-topic-category?post=1263688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}