NotenTexte. At the End of Time - A Musical-Literary Evening

Jella-Lepman-Hall

Fanny Hensel died unexpectedly of a stroke in May 1847. Her brother Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was so devastated by her death that he retreated to the Swiss mountains: "Up to now I have not been able to think of work, let alone of music, without feeling the greatest emptiness and desert in my head and heart." Nevertheless, in the following weeks he began to compose a string quartet in the sombre and black key of F minor, clearly related to the death of his sister. Two months after completing the score, in the same year as Fanny, Felix also died of a stroke.

If Haydn's String Quartet op. 77/1 is not related to a personal loss, it was composed in 1799 at a time of decline, when the wars with France were weakening the Habsburg Dual Monarchy and impoverishing the population. In the hope of receiving financial support, Haydn dedicated it to Prince Lobkowitz. Both string quartets are thus works written at the end of a period.

For Haydn, a prose text by Ilse Aichinger will be read, which is poetically condensed, concrete and enigmatic at the same time, and in which the author transforms irretrievably lost things into a dream-like present.

Mendelssohn-Bartholdy will be accompanied by two episodes from Esther Kinsky's "Hain. Geländeroman" (2018) will be read aloud, in which the narrator, after the death of her partner M. in northern Italy, takes long hikes to perceive her surroundings with an awareness sharpened by grief and pain, and in the process tracks down the secret of transcendence.

Programme

Joseph Haydn
String Quartet No. 66 in G Major, op. 77 No. 1, Hob.III:81

Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy
String Quartet No. 6 in F minor, op. 80

With

Andrea Eun-Jeong Kim, Violin
Nicola Birkhan, Violin
Christiane Hörr-Kalmer, Viola
Jaka Stadler, Cello

Heiko Ruprecht, Speaker

Texts by Ilse Aichinger and Ester Kinsky

Tickets from 20 Euros via the BR Ticketshop or 0800 - 5900 594

A cooperation of the Foundation International Youth Library and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

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