The overwhelming evening with the Quatuor Ébène and Martin Fröst in the Prinzregententheater could not have been more excitingly contrasting in its three parts: After Mozart’s dreamily floating clarinet quintet, the first string quartet by Leoš Janáček, which was repeatedly taken to extremes, and exuberant, wonderfully dancing jazz and folk standards.
At first, no sheet of music seemed to fit between first violin (Pierre Colombet) and clarinet. Because the two made music with each other with a sweetness and tenderness, as if they were a loving couple caressing each other. As dreamy and sensitive as Gabriel Le Magadure, the other violinist, violist Marie Chilemme and Raphaël Merlin on the cello also assisted them! But then the larghetto began to float fourfold, and the minuet with its two trios became a premonition of the finale. When a telephone suddenly rang immediately before the minor variation, the four of them waited a moment together before they started again: what proof of the dreamlike secure agreement!
In Janáček’s case, four voices tell something different. And yet it is a story: that of jealousy from Tolstoy’s “Kreuzersonata”
With Janáček the radical opposite: four voices that keep interrupting each other and each of which seems to be painfully telling something different. And yet it is a single story: that of jealousy from Tolstoy’s “Kreuzer Sonata”. When all four strings pulled together, the sun rose almost unreally for a moment.
With Martin Fröst, who elicited all facets from his clarinet with almost erotic suppleness, a fantastic, apparently effortlessly light-footed freestyle enchanted after the break. Yiddish, Bartók, jazz standards between Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Wayne Shorter and the fifth Hungarian dance by Brahms were presented with such sophistication, playfulness and joie de vivre that the ovations were not enough as thanks for the unforgettable gift of this concert.