Representing four different nations, the Gémeaux Quartett is one of the leading ensembles of its generation. During the 2010/11 season, the Quartet made its highly acclaimed debut at the Philharmonie in Berlin. Recent highlights include concerts in Hong Kong with clarinetist Paul Meyer, a performance of Schubert’s Octet with Jörg Widmann and Bruno Schneider, an appearance at the World Economic Forum in Davos as well as a collaboration with the Bundesjugendballet at the Konzerthaus in Berlin.
The four young musicians came together because of their passion for the string quartet repertoire – in 2003 they formed the Gémeaux Quartett at the Hochschule für Musik in Basel where they studied with Walter Levin and Sebastian Hamann. As part of a postgraduate course for string quartets, the Quartet then received further training from the Hagen Quartet at the ‘Mozarteum’, Salzburg University, and continued to work with Rainer Schmidt at the Hochschule für Musik Basel.
Pre-concert talk by Joseph Fort at 5.30pm in the Brockway Room:
A curious coincidence connects the Haydn and Brahms quartets on tonight’s programme: both were completed (or at least published) when their respective composers were forty years old. Moreover, both works count amongst Haydn’s and Brahms’s earliest published attempts in the quartet genre. As such, it is worth considering these pieces in relation to the sound world from which they emerged—indeed, asking how each might be considered a response to the music that preceded it. Haydn at the time was facing his North-German critics, and was said to be fond of parodying their style in his works from this period. And Brahms reportedly destroyed some twenty previous quartet compositions before deciding that his Op. 51 set was worthy of publication. This talk will explore how these compositions both carry and throw off their past, and will orient listeners to some key features of the music, before the evening’s performance.
'This was a colourful and captivating performance (...) They attacked Beethoven's fortissimos with gusto, and the finale was a galloping, joyous showpiece' [The Strad, 2012]