Casals and Cosmos Quartets

Claudio Monteverdi’s madrigal Sfogava con le stelle is the starting point for Barcelona-born composer Raquel García-Tomás’s original work for string trio revised for quartet ensembles. The square brackets around the title represent a lack of a beginning and an end, the fragmented and uncertain nature of any creation. The Renaissance madrigal theme appears in the middle of the harmonic clash and joins forces with the most modern techniques.

In the second string quartet, which is split into seven parts but with a single time signature, Robert Gerhard goes deep into the techniques of Schönberg’s serialism and legacy and explores new timbre possibilities for string instruments. Finally, we will hear the second of Beethoven’s three “Razumovsky Quartets”, a work commissioned by the Russian ambassador to Vienna, that has become a leading work in the European chamber music repertoire.