Leonkoro Quartett / Chorzelski

Much has been made of the gentle fading away of its second movement: in his String Quartet in D major, Hob. III/79, Haydn places the emphasis on the Largo. Immediately after the death of his sister Fanny (and shortly before his own), Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy composed his String Quartet Op. 80 in the sombre key of F minor.

Time to go
Finally, with Krzysztof Chorzelski on viola, Johannes Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2, Op. 111, is performed – a work with which he believed he was bringing his compositional career to a close. ‘It is »certainly time to go«,’ he wrote in the preface.

In memoriam Günter Pichler
This concert is dedicated to the memory of Günter Pichler, whose contribution to string quartet performance cannot be overestimated. He founded the legendary Alban Berg Quartet, which set new standards in string quartet culture with its own cycle at the Vienna Konzerthaus from 1971 to 2008 and is counted amongst the honorary members of the Vienna Konzerthaus Society. Furthermore, through his teaching, he shaped subsequent generations of quartets like almost no other – including the Leonkoro Quartet, which, like the Belcea Quartet – represented this evening by Krzystof Chorzelski – continues the quartet tradition in the Mozart Hall.