The Molinari Quartet will celebrate its 25th anniversary on Friday at 7:30 p.m. in the concert hall of the Conservatoire de Montréal with music from Eastern Europe through which the musicians have left their mark in concert and on record.
“We have never played so well, so well sounded. The cohesion, the sound, the atmosphere, everything is at the best level. Olga Ranzenhofer, first violin and founder of the Molinari Quartet, is exuberant as this anniversary concert approaches.
Through this inventory, it prepares us above all for seeing the Molinari very soon resume the greatest masterpieces of the 20th century.e century, like Quartets of Bartók or Shostakovich.
“We can, we want, we must return to these masterpieces. If the reasoning is peremptory, it is precisely because of the 25 years. “We have come to revisit these scores. They have matured over these years. The basic work is done, we can go to another level. The Molinaris put the 3e Quartet by Bartók on the program of their concert on December 9. “You don’t see Bartók the same way when we played Ligeti and Kurtág. It’s very stimulating. »
Integrals
Ligeti and Kurtág will be on the program on Friday. “We have a lot of repertoire, so a wide choice. Such an event is a look back at our past 25 years. Obviously, Murray Schafer was very present, but we paid tribute to him last year. So, we rested on our events entitled “The quartet according to…”. There was Ligeti, Bartók, Penderecki, Britten… A lot of this music is from Eastern Europe, music that we have a lot of fun playing. Often very dark, dramatic, they contain energy and emotion. »
Of the four composers chosen, the Molinari performed and recorded the respective integrals. “So it highlights our records with Atma, even if the 4e Quartet by Penderecki does not appear in the integral. Penderecki was supposed to write it for the Quatuor Belcea, but we waited a very long time. Finally, it is a small work of six minutes that he wrote, then withdrew in order to rework it, which he never did. the 4e quartetr will be recorded by us next June and added to the digital version of the album. »
From Alfred Schnittke, the Molinaris chose the 2e Quartet, “flagship work with extraordinary contrasts”. Kurtág was chosen for his importance in the international recognition of the ensemble: “This composer has brought us a lot of success, with an ECHO Klassik prize. ” As to 1er Quartet of Ligeti, Kurtág himself saw in it the ” 7e Quartet of Bartok”!
In doing so, the Molinari keep alive the music of composers from this “grey zone” mentioned in our DMag last Saturday by Professor Anne-Sylvie Barthel-Calvet about Iannis Xenakis: these composers who are no longer programmed in contemporary music festivals, but who have not entered the repertoires of institutions.