“Under no circumstances close to D flat!”, it says on the last page of Alban Berg’s “Lyrical Suite”. With this pale ending, a unique chamber music festival comes to an end. It marks the end of the Bad Tölz “Prize Winners’ Summit”, at which six recently awarded string quartets performed at the invitation of the “Klangerlebnis” association.
The Australian one Affinity Quartet impressed with Haydn, Beethoven and a composition by their compatriot Brett Dean (“Hidden Agendas”), in which the four of them were able to show their passion for the concrete, precise design of musical textures. This happened two days later Barbican Quartet, deserved winner of the ARD competition 2022. The Milanese is still at the beginning of his career after a first prize in Osaka Quartet Indaco. In Bad Tölz there was a convincing performance with music by Germaine Tailleferre and a Schubert homage by her cellist Cosimo Carovani.
The concert also featured new music Isidore Quartet from New York. His interpretation of “Umbra” by the Iranian composer Aida Shirazi, which differentiates succinctly in shades of grey, was equally as inspiring as the semi-staged performance of “The Disappearance of Lisa Gherardini”, with which Dinuk Wijeratne gave a musical form to the abduction of the Mona Lisa in 1911. This is already a crowd favorite Leonkoro Quartet, which played Schubert, Janáček and Beethoven. The Viennese Chaos String Quartet made the atonally adequate conclusion.
It’s exciting to hear how they turn their name into a creative principle: the Vienna Chaos String Quartet at the “Prize Winners Summit” in Bad Tölz.
(Photo: Manfred Neubauer)
“Will this be accepted?” asked the organizer Christoph Kessler. It was believed nearly a thousand tickets were sold. Kessler and his wife Susanne travel through half of Europe on a quartet safari. “Sometimes we look at each other after two bars and know: We have to invite them!” says Christoph Kessler. He always has a contract in his pocket. The spa town has succeeded in establishing itself as a string quartet hotspot with the “quartettissimo!” series, which was launched in 2018.
Fine acoustics: The string concerts in the beautiful Kurhaus Hall find their audience, connoisseurs and first-time listeners come, that’s how it should be.
(Photo: Manfred Neubauer)
The idea came about during a concert in Munich. Fate would have it for the sold out concert Quatuor Ebène with Menahem Pressler in Munich, tickets suddenly became available. “We have to do that too,” said the Kesslers, overwhelmed by the music. The idea remained to also support young quartets. This is how the top-class competition in 2023 came about, with plans for the next one in 2026 already underway. A commissioned work should be a compulsory piece, including a quartet by Bartók and Beethoven. The “Prize Winners’ Summit” is to be seen as its brother event – a concert forum for excellent quartets at the beginning of their careers.
Organizing all of this is a “full-time hobby” for Kessler. With this hobby he prevents withdrawal symptoms in the audience after the festival: the Finnish one is playing on Sunday, March 3rd Meta4 Quartet in Bad Tölz, before the Copenhagen one Novo Quartet ushers in the new “quartettissimo” season in autumn (Sunday, October 27th). This will be followed by a special concert on the 50th anniversary of Shostakovich’s death on Sunday, January 19, 2025, and concerts for the Tölzer Thomas Mann Festival.
And yet: the award winners’ summit was something special. Ending it with Berg’s Lyrical Suite is fitting because the piece itself seems puzzled by its ending. “Under no circumstances close to D flat,” you want to shout – it’s best not to stop at all. Fortunately, that’s out of the question.