Pacific Quartet Vienna

Four seasons, four elements, four points of the compass – the number “four” has long had a deep significance to humanity, standing for the Earthly order in contrast to the divinity of the three-part God. Things in fours can be divided and reconstituted simply. The corner points of a square are always related to each other; and to take a musical example, the four musicians of a string quartet are all connected to each other too, communicating through their playing – like a conversation between four individual voices.

The transparent nature of the string quartet demands extraordinarily fine playing and the highest musical quality from its members. The intimacy of its instrumentation means that musical expression is its prime focus. This is arguably what has made the genre of the string quartet the supreme discipline in the world of chamber music. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Hunt” Quartet is one of the high points of the genre. It got its nickname from the fanfare-like opening of its first movement, in which first the violins and then the viola imitate hunting horns. The second movement and the final, fourth movement are more dance-like and cheerful, while the Adagio third movement soars above them all: Here, the four voices of the quartet actually seem to speak to each other, to sing, and to lament, as if performing an operatic aria: whether alone, in duet or altogether.

Antonín Dvořák and Robert Schumann, on the other hand, offer a quite different perspective. Although Schumann engaged in an intensive study of Mozart’s chamber music, his String Quartet op. 41 No. 2 is more obviously influenced by Beethoven. The first movement is elegant and full of beauty; it is followed by a set of artful variations in the second movement, and restless melodic progressions in the third. Schumann’s last movement concludes cheerfully with a quotation from Beethoven’s song cycle To the Distant Beloved. Dvořák dispenses with the viola in his Bagatelles, instead inviting the harmonium to join the fray. There was a pragmatic reason for this: just such an instrument stood in the rooms of the chamber music association for which he wrote this work, and it made sense to use it. In Andermatt, this part will be played by the accordionist Tizia Zimmermann, who also lends her unmistakable timbre to Astor Piazzolla’s sensational tangos at the close of the concert.