Allerzielen Concert Rozenlust

All Souls’ Day
Musical afternoon.

• Jozsef Lendvay, violin
• Tomi Shimon, violin
• Julia Dinerstein, viola
• Katja Dirven, cello

Programme

Samuel Barber — Adagio from String Quartet Op. 11

The most sorrowful melody in music history.

Aside from the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, there is hardly a classical work that captures the imagination as much as Barber’s Adagio for Strings.

It has been heard at countless solemn and sad moments: the deaths of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Princess Diana, the funeral of Albert Einstein, after the attacks of September 11, 2001, at Charlie Hebdo, and at Zaventem.

Listeners of the BBC chose it in 2004 as the saddest classical work ever.

Music journalist Olin Downes called it at its premiere in 1938:

“Honest music from an honest composer, who does not strive for cheap effects. Its strength lies in its simplicity.”

How can it be that precisely this melody touches so deeply? Perhaps because in every note the human voice of sorrow and comfort resonates.

Giacomo Puccini — Crisantemi

An elegy for string quartet, written in 1890 in memory of King Amadeus I of Spain.

The work breathes restrained mourning and melodic melancholy — music in which Puccini’s operatic heart is palpably felt.

He later reused some themes in his opera Manon Lescaut.

Pieter Verhulst

Requiem

Pieter will personally talk about his composition

Franz Schubert — Der Tod und das Mädchen, D 810

1. Allegro
2. Andante con moto
3. Scherzo – Allegro molto
4. Presto – d minor

With his Fourteenth String Quartet, Schubert reached a poignant peak.

Der Tod und das Mädchen is considered one of the most impressive works in chamber music history: over thirty minutes of music in which Death with his scythe is not terrifying, but almost peacefully present.

Although Schubert feared that his sense of beauty was waning, it was precisely here that he wrote his most organic, melancholic quartet.

All four string players engage in an equal conversation — as Haydn once intended the classical quartet.

At an early performance, the famous violinist Ignaz Schuppanzigh is said to have somewhat mockingly remarked:

“Friend, this is nothing.” “Leave the string quartet for what it is and stick to your songs.”

Fortunately, history decided otherwise.🎻 Lendvay Ensemble

A warm, unforgettable afternoon with a warm welcome and refreshments