Tetzlaff Quartett

There are two reasons to celebrate when the Tetzlaff Quartett returns to the Elbe river: besides their own anniversary, the musicians are also celebrating Arnold Schönberg, who celebrates his 150th birthday in 2024 and to whom the Elbphilharmonie is naturally devoting a special focus for this occasion. With his first string quartet, one of the composer’s earlier works is on the programme – radically innovative, yet still tonal, it pushes the artistic forms of the late Romantic period to their limit.

In his own creative process, Schönberg studied the string quartets of Johannes Brahms in particular. Captivated and touched by his motif writing, Schönberg wanted to see himself in the Romantic tradition. How apt then that the Tetzlaff Quartett presents his work after the likewise first string quartet by Brahms. Emotionally unsettling, incomprehensibly dense and profoundly melancholic, the composition is still one of the key works of the quartet repertoire.

The musicians, however, open the evening with a fascinating insight into the musical present: for this, they provide the Second String Quartet by the successful composer Jörg Widmann, who has been closely connected with the Elbphilharmonie ever since it opened. His string quartet entitled »Choralquartett« is a unique slow and also emotionally profound movement which holds many novel sound effects.