The Atrium string quartet comprising:
Sergei Malov (violin)
Anton Ilyunin (violin)
Dmitry Pitulko (viola)
Anna Gorelova (cello)
PROGRAMME:
Ludwig van Beethoven
String Quartets Nos 7–9, Op. 59 (Russian)
Atrium was the first Russian quartet to win victory at two major international competitions. In 2003 the orchestra won 1st prize and the Audience Award at the IX International Quartet Competition in London. In July 2007 the jury of the V International String Quartet Competition in Bordeaux unanimously awarded the Atrium quartet its Grand Prix and the Société Générale Bank Prize.
The Atrium string quartet was founded in 2000 by students of the St Petersburg State Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire who had studied under Professor Iosif Levinzon, a cellist with the renowned Taneyev Quartet. The ensemble was the principal guest quartet of The Netherlands Academy of String Quartets, where its members trained under Stefan Metz. The quartet’s musicians completed their postgraduate studies at the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler in Berlin under Professor Eberhard Feltz. The Quartet has also been coached by famous musicians from the Alban Berg Quartet, Vermeer Quartet, by Marc Danel.
The quartet has won at international competitions in Moscow, Cremona and Weimar.
Atrium currently appears at numerous music festivals including the Beethovenfest Bonn, the Stars of the White Nights in St Petersburg, festivals in Schwetzingen, Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Bad Kissingen, Davos and Lucerne.
The Quartet has performed with such eminent musicians as violist
Richard Young of the Vermeer Quartet, pianists Brigitte Engerer and Jean-Bernard Pommier, cellist Antonio Meneses.
In 2013 Atrium became the first ensemble in the history of chamber music to present all fifteen quartets by Shostakovich in just one day. This feat of endeavour was celebrated by audiences in Russia, Iceland, France and Japan. Next season the quartet will continue the series in Germany, The Netherlands and the USA.
Engagements for the ensemble this season include tours and master-classes in the USA and The Netherlands in addition to concerts in Berlin, London, Hamburg, St Petersburg and festivals in Finland, Germany and China. Also this season, to mark one hundred and seventy-five years since the birth of Tchaikovsky, the quartet will be performing a programme including all of the great composer’s chamber opuses. The first series of concerts with this programme was held in Berlin in April 2015.
The ensemble’s discography includes recordings of quartets by Mozart, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Beethoven released on the labels EMI Classics, Zig-ZagTerritoires and RCM. These recordings were named “Discs of the Month” by leading music publications Gramophone and Luister.
The musicians have also recorded four quartets by contemporary Spanish composer Jordi Cervelló (Columna Musica). The maestro dedicated his most recent string quartet St Petersburg (2011) to the musicians of Atrium.
Currently the quartet’s members live and work in Berlin. The musicians perform instruments produced by Italian craftsmen – violins made by Ferdinando Gagliano (1780) and Paolo Castello (1770), a viola by Lorenzo Carcassi (1775) and a cello by Giovanni Batista Cerruti (1798).
Beethoven composed his “Russian” quartets in 1806 for Count Andrei Kirillovich Razumovsky, who for many years had been the Russian envoy to Vienna. In both diplomacy and his personal life Razumovsky was a true artist, and his palace in Vienna – built by the architect Louis Montoyer, also in 1806, was renowned for its rich collections and library. The vast estates of his father in his homeland and the thousands of serfs meant that Andrei Razumovsky did not have to think about expense. One of Razumovsky’s passions was music, particularly playing the violin in a string quartet. He even had his own chamber ensemble the Ignaz Schuppanzing Quartet, which premiered many of Beethoven’s quartets.
Long before Beethoven a series of “Russian” quartets had been composed by Joseph Haydn for the future Paul I. Apart from the title, however, there is nothing Russian about them. Beethoven chose a different path; the finale of the first of the three quartets was composed to the theme of the song Ah, My Fortune, My Fortune, while in the middle of the third movement of the second quartet we here the theme from the peasant song Glory. Interestingly, Beethoven didn’t turn to the most obvious imagery – he did not use the theme Kamarinskaya theme, which at that time was the only well-known Russian song in the West. He turned to Kamarinskaya in 1796 when composing variations for piano on the Russian Dance theme from Paul Wranitzky's ballet Das Waldmädchen, though he never returned to it. Apparently the Razumovsky library held a copy of the famous Lvov-Prach anthology of Russian songs. The choice of Glory from so many other songs speaks of his powerful intuition – after all, it was this song that subsequently came to the attention of Alyabiev, Musorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and other Russian composers.
Only twice did Beethoven write on his sheet music the words “Russian theme”. In fact, there are significantly more Russian intonations in the Quartets Op. 59, beginning with the very first bars. Possibly the Lvov-Prach anthology was indeed meticulously studied by the composer who at the time expressed an interest in folklore for the first time. Four years later Beethoven immersed himself in serious adaptations of folk songs and produced a total of some one hundred and fifty of them.
Anna Bulycheva
| user_name | | Exit |
