Selected by / Alma Quartet
Marc Daniel van Biemen violin, Benjamin Peled violin, Jeroen Woudstra viola, Nitzan Laster cello
Johannes Brahms Strijkkwartet nr. 3 in Bes op. 67
Philip Glass Quartettsatz (Dutch première)
In the summer of 1875, Brahms was on vacation in picturesque Ziegelhausen. His greatest occupation during that vacation was to avoid his First Symphony, which weighed on his shoulders like a burden. Instead, he wrote a lot of beautiful chamber music, including his third string quartet. He himself described it as a trivial work, but for a string quartet that this work is going to play is no less true. The musical ideal of Brahms requires a lot from a string quartet; the richness of its sound can be perfectly achieved with a quintet or sextet, but a quartet must work hard to match this.
As part of the 50 For the Future project, Philip Glass wrote Quartettsatz for the Kronos Quartet in 2017. A small, beautiful and yet powerful work in the recognizable language of Glass.
The Alma Quartet plays two pieces by these exceptional composers.