Le mystère des voix bulgares: this was the name of a legendary record (or rather a series of records) that electrified music fans all over the world: rough, rubbing, flattering, incredibly rhythmic choral sounds that had never been heard before! Or had they? Béla Bartók, the great Hungarian folk music researcher, had already poured them into his string quartet in the 1930s, and Bulgarian ensembles and choirs had never stopped cultivating the country’s musical traditions. East and West, church sounds and fast-paced village bands meet here. The quartet around our violinist with Bulgarian roots, Maria Geißler, embarks on a virtuoso and sensuous search for traces.

Bulgarische Stimmen

Beethoven-Haus Bonn

There’s a lot going on in Vienna: devils are up to mischief, a fountain is bubbling with gold and a cockerel is laying eggs! What a load of rubbish, you think? Let’s take a stroll through this fantastic city with Viennese hits and see what else we come across.

Wiener Klatsch und Tratsch

Theater Bonn Opera House

Large-scale chamber music with piano from the Romantic period almost always means expansive arrangements, sweeping themes, sharp contrasts and tonal opulence. Our solo horn player, Geoffrey Winter, has put together a program for the opening of our chamber concert season at the Beethoven-Haus, in which Johannes Brahms‘ early horn trio is certainly the best-known piece, but not the longest. Why do composers compose? The highly romantic program around piano and horn, one piece more beautiful than the other, provides three answers to this question – and we find that these answers do not allow any conclusions to be drawn about the nature of the composition, its quality, its accessibility or its details: The young Johannes Brahms composed (at least part of) his trio when he was mourning the death of his mother. Mourning, coming to terms with the death of a loved one. Walter Rabl submitted his Quartet op. 1 to a composition competition and won a prize – the jury included none other than the now graying and famous Johannes Brahms. And Zdeněk Fibich’s themes for his piano quintet come in part from his thoroughly erotic musical diary, a collection of hundreds of piano pieces that the composer wrote for his lover, pupil and librettist Anežka Schulzová. And what does this music do to us? Everyone has to find out for themselves …

Piano quintet

In the meantime, Beethoven was not at all enthusiastic about the success of his Septet op. 20, which was premiered together with the First Symphony and the First Piano Concerto in 1800: The work for seven instruments, which followed Mozart's great Divertimento K. 563 in the same key exactly in its structure, was Beethoven's most popular work at the time and also his most frequently performed until around 1830. Beethoven probably felt that this septet, which was close to the light music of his time, blocked the view of his “serious” compositions! Today, we can consider ourselves fortunate to gain a glimpse of the humorous, the youthful and mercurial Beethoven through this 45-minute piece. Of course, as always with Beethoven, this does not preclude great depth and complexity: In the Adagio, the second and longest movement, time simply stops. We juxtapose Beethoven's work with similarly large-scale, generous chamber music: Namely, the rarely played Octet by Stuttgart-born August Walter – one of those pieces that makes one wonder, in the justice of music history, why this wonderful, brilliant, deeply felt great work was not known before?

Maria Geißler

Events

Past events

Apr 28, 2025

Bulgarische Stimmen · Beethoven Orchester Bonn

16 - 17 Feb, 2025

Wiener Klatsch und Tratsch · Beethoven Orchester Bonn

Future and recently performed repertoire

Violin in String Quartet No. 5 by Bartók

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

Violin in Septet by Beethoven

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

Violin in Quartet for Piano, Violin, Clarinet, and Cello by Rabl

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

Violin in String Quartet No. 1 by Hadjiev

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

Violin in Octet by Walter

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

About

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