Simply Quartet, Geister Duo, Tinka Pypker, a.o.

Schubert, Reimann
Februari Festival
Wed 23 Feb / 20:00
Wed 23 Feb ’22
20:00
  • Wed 23 Feb ’22
    20:00
    Nieuwe Kerk, The Hague
    Past event

Schubert, master of the four-hand piano piece, was the first composer to turn the piano into the bourgeoisie’s household orchestra. His four-hands compositions are far more than mere entertaining frippery. 

Programme

Franz Schubert Allegro in A minor, D947 ‘Lebensstürme’ 
Franz Schubert Grand Rondeau in A major, D951
Franz Schubert/ Aribert Reimann ‘Mignon’ for soprano and string quartet
Franz Schubert String Quartet No. 15 in G major, D887


Musicians

Tinka Pypker soprano
Simply Quartet
Geister Duo
David Salmon & Manuel Vieillard piano duo - four hands
Jeroen Dupont &
Andrej Roszyk violin
Takehiro Konoe viola
Emanuele Silvestri cello

The elaborately ambitious Allegro in A minor, which he wrote in the last year of his life, may have been intended as the first part of a sonata. Anton Diabelli, who published the piece in 1840, gave it the suggestive title Lebensstürme: The Storms of Life. Schubert wrote Grand Rondeau in A major in the same year, which may have been the second part of the hypothetical sonata.

In 1995, the German composer Aribert Reimann adapted four of Schubert’s many Mignon Lieder for soprano and string quartet, using texts by Goethe. Reimann wrote brief introductions and codas for the various pieces to bring them together into a single whole, and also transcribed the piano accompaniments into Schubert’s own late string quartet idiom with such brilliance that the transition to the final piece of the evening, Schubert’s last string quartet, seems entirely natural.