Saturday 26th March 2022 | 7:30pm
Curtis Auditorium, MTU Cork School of Music
French string quartet Quatuor Danel was founded in 1991 and has been at the forefront of the international music scene ever since – they were the first, for example, to record all 17 of Mieczyslaw Weinberg’s stunning string quartets, single-handedly leading the revival of the composer’s music. The programme for this concert includes Weinberg’s spirited Quartet No.9 in F-sharp Minor; Lera Auerbach’s 2011 Quartet No.5, “Songs of Alkonost”, inspired by a mythical woman-headed bird; and Tchaikovsky’s String Quartet No.3 in E-flat Minor, his final quartet and a poignant tribute to Ferdinand Laub, whom Tchaikovsky called “the best violinist of our time.”
Tickets (only available through online booking below):
€20 (General Admission) | €15 (Concessions & COS standard members)
€10 (COS concessionary members) | €5 (Students)
Programme
Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-96)
String Quartet No.9 in F-sharp minor, Op.80
Lera Auerbach (born 1971)
String Quartet No.5, ‘Songs of Alkonost’
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–93)
String Quartet No.3 in E-flat minor, Op.30
QUATOUR DANEL
Vlad Bogdanas viola
Marc Danel violin
Yovan Markovitch cello
Gilles Millet violin
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 ground-breaking CD recordings. 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 Wolfgang Rihm, Helmut Lachenmann, Sofia Gubaidulina, Pascal Dusapin, Jörg Widmann and Bruno Mantovani.
Russian composers have a special place in the Quatuor Danel’s repertoire. They have championed all the string quartets by Shostakovich and recorded the complete cycle for Fuga Libera in 2005. This box-set was re-issued by Alpha and still counts as one of the benchmark interpretations of Shostakovich’s quartets. The Danel were the first quartet to record the other great string quartet cycle of the twentieth century: the seventeen quartets by Mieczysław Weinberg. Their performance in Manchester and Utrecht was the first ever live interpretation of the complete Weinberg cycle worldwide.
Education is also at the heart of the activities of the Quatuor Danel. An essential part of their mission is to pass on their knowledge, their experience and the musical heritage they received from their own mentors: members of the Amadeus and Borodin Quartets, Fyodor Druzhinin, Pierre Penassou, Walter Levin and Hugh Maguire. Since 2005, the Quatuor Danel is quartet in residence at the University of Manchester, where they uphold a tradition of coaching and collaborations with world renowned musicologists. Since 2015, they also teach regularly at the Netherlands String Quartet
Academy in Amsterdam. They have given classes at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), University of Maryland and Skidmore College, at the Taipei National University of the Arts, at Conservatoire of Music and Dance Lyon the Conservatoires of Lille and Nice and at the Kuhmo Chamber Music Festival.
The quartet’s current diary will take them to the major concert halls in Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Madrid, Vienna, Hamburg, Milano, Taipei, Tokyo, New York, Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco, but they are also comfortable playing in lesser known intimate venues. Quatuor Danel is a regular guest at festivals such as Ottawa, Kuhmo, Cork, Lofoten, Schleswig-Holstein, Bregenz, Schostakowitsch Tage Gorisch, Luzern Zaubersee, Sakharov Festival, Richter Festival, Enescu Festival, Fayence, Luberon, Montpellier, Folle Journée de Nantes and Musica Mundi. During present seasons the Danel will be featuring a series of quartet cycles around the world: the complete Shostakovich and Weinberg cycles at Phillips Collection Washington, Wigmore Hall, Muziekgebouw Amsterdam and Tivoli Vredenburg Utrecht, Philharmonie de Paris, Elbphilarmonie Hamburg. Complete Beethoven cycles will be performed in Jerusalem, Taipei, Lyon, Badenweiler, Manchester and finally in Utrecht.
In October 2016, the Quatuor Danel started a three-year residency in Utrecht, consisting of concerts, masterclasses, lectures and unusual collaborations with other artists. The Danel’s will be in residency at Wigmore Hall for three years in 2019.