Name: Death and the Maiden
Start: 2024-01-15T20:00:00
Location: Beethoven-Haus Bonn

Melanie Torres-Meißner

Thomas Plümacher

Johannes Rapp

Ieva Andreeva

Beethoven Orchester Bonn

The Yaron Quartet is one of the permanent chamber music formations of the Beethoven Orchestra Bonn. For years, the ensemble has been working on the extensive string quartet repertoire and keeps coming up with surprising discoveries and clever concert programs. This season, Franz Schubert's great string quartet Death and the Maiden is the core of the program: one of the milestones of literature that never leaves quartet and audience unchanged. The power of the four conceivably different movements, which go to the limits of what can be played, felt, thought, is too haunting. The Lithuanian contemporary composer Algirdas Martinaitis mirrors Schubert's work in his quartet with the same title Mirtis ir mergele – Death and the Maiden . He approaches its content, its emotional worlds, and at times breaks through barriers that separate two pieces of music. The questions of originality and individuality, of imitation and reflection, of depth and banality have been important themes for Martinaitis to confront us with in recent years. The Yaron Quartet separates the two works through Arvo Pärt's iconic composition Fratres , one of the early examples of his bell style. Endless repetitions, chord progressions similar to the ringing of entire chimes seem to establish a world between day and dream – a world where the passions, the consolation, the despair that speaks from Schubert's and Martinaitis' works can only be perceived from a distance.