The young musicians of the Amaris Quartet, all members of the Philharmonic State Orchestra, have invited the mezzo-soprano Ida Aldrian from the Hamburg State Opera’s ensemble to join them in this chamber concert. While string quartet literature by Béla Bartók and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opens and closes the programme, compositions for string quartet and voice form its centre. Johannes Brahms’ songs based on texts by William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and Paul Hindemith’s “Melancholie”, setting poems on loneliness by Christian Morgenstern, focus on dark, gripping emotions. The transcription of the Brahms songs for voice and string quartet by Aribert Reimann hews close to the romantic original. And although Bartók and Mozart offered no programme for their string quartets, their emotional stance matches the song compositions: Bartók was tormented by an unrequited love for the violinist Stefi Geyer while writing his piece – in a letter to her, he called the first movement of his work a “lament of sorrow”. Mozart’s composition dates to 1782, a fateful year for classical music that marked the breakthrough of a young generation of artists. Given the “backdrop” of the world premiere of Friedrich Schiller’s “Die Räuber” and the writing of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “Erlkönig”, Mozart’s composition can be considered a departure for a new form of drama, which also found its expression in purely instrumental music.
