Munich is her second home, has the best audience, but, says Gabriel le Magadure, second violinist of the Quatuor Ébène, mischievously in the jubilant Prinzregententheater, this time there will be no encore. We worked very intensively with Daniel Mitnitsky, the cellist, on this demanding program, and that’s enough.
In fact, Raphaël Merlin was not on the cello, as expected and usual, but Daniel Mitnitsky, who otherwise plays in the Aviv Quartet. Now each world-class four-piece ensemble develops its very own cosmos of sound.
The “Ébènes” – in addition to Magadure and Merlin, the never heavy-fingered primarius Pierre Colombet and the meanwhile impressively integrated and integrating violist Marie Chilemme, who came for Mathieu Herzog – have from the beginning through an extremely finely tuned, admirable in the delicate as well as in the fortissimo intense, intonation-free four-tone, often enraptured. It’s great how Daniel Mitnitsky fits into this cunning soundscape, although he isn’t gifted with the flexibility and tonal delicacy of Merlin.
His adaptability was particularly evident in Maurice Ravel’s only quartet, so floating, then glowing, moved by winds of sound and plucking virtuously in the second movement, the four conjured up this masterpiece. The way scents seem to turn into sounds, echoes sound from the depths of the room and the four of them get lost in a pensive way, only to then grab their hands violently and expand furiously – it was intoxicating.
Previously, the musicians had presented a pleasantly elegant Bachiana suite by the Swiss composer Richard Dubugnon, who skilfully transformed Bach movements into string quartet music. He had also previously tried to say something about the piece, but the audience bothered him too much with “louder” heckling. The “Ebenholzer” closed the evening with Robert Schumann’s Op. 41, 3, in which the 2nd and 3rd movements in particular are as brilliant as they are heartfelt: Ovations!