Philharmonia Quartett Berlin

Internationally renowned string quartet formations – the American Emerson String Quartet, France-based Quatuor Diotima and the Philharmonia Quartett from Berlin – will perform all of Béla Bartók’s string quartets on three evenings as part of Musikfest Berlin 2013. A special highlight: in each concert, Bartók’s music is contrasted with pathbreaking works for string quartet by other composers.

The Philharmonia Quartett has put together an especially enlightening programme for this small but distinguished Bartók cycle: the four musicians complement Bartók’s String Quartet No. 1, which was composed in 1908 and bears influences of the late Romantic period and French Expressionism, with the Ludwig van Beethoven’s String Quartet Op. 18, No.1, which was published in 1801. This work was Beethoven’s first compository encounter with the supreme discipline of chamber music.

In this concert it not only becomes apparent how different the quartet debuts – one hundred years apart – by these two important composers turned out. The Philharmonia Quartett has also included Bartók’s String Quartet No. 5 from 1934 on the programme. And this work attests in an impressive way to the enormous stylistic and compository developments Bartók underwent in his decades-long exploration of the genre of the string quartet.