String quartet playing does not mean that four musicians start together, but it is about coming to a higher synthesis of symphonic spirit with different temperaments and views, in technical, tonal, music-penetrating terms. So this four-way talk, if it is to succeed, has a lot to fulfill. The music writer Johann Friedrich Reichhardt put it most aptly after he had experienced the Schuppanzigh Quartet with music by Joseph Haydn: “. . .music that, no matter how difficult it is, to bring to perfection in execution, because that Whole and each individual part is heard in its entirety, and only becomes completely satisfying in the most perfect purity, unification and merging . . .”.
On this approximately four-hour evening in the Prinzregententheater, three very different formations showed how close one can ever come to the trinity of “purity, union and fusion”. The internationally acclaimed Munich Goldmund Quartet (Florian Schötz, Pinchas Adt, violins; Christoph Vandory, viola; Raphael Paratore, cello) began with Haydn’s “Lerchenquartett” so light, airy, wide awake with cheerful seriousness that it was a pleasure and the whole event, which Annekatrin Hentschel moderated with contagious enthusiasm.
The youngest ensemble, the Quatuor Agate (Adrien Jurkovic, Thomas Descamps; Raphael Pagnon; Simon Iachemet), founded in 2016, proved in terms of tonality and rhythmic elasticity that Luigi Boccherini also had an elegant say in the early days of quartet literature. Later, the “Agates” passionately illuminated two movements from Johannes Brahms’ 1st Quartet and enjoyed the offbeat wit of Béla Bartók’s Burletta from his 6th Quartet.
The four demonstrated why the Quatuor Diotima (YunPeng Zhao, Léo Marillier; Franck Chevalier; Pierre Morlet) is world-famous because of its commitment to today’s music with a piece of eternal modernity, Ludwig van Beethoven’s op. 130 with the madness of the “Great Fugue”. as a final. What can often end in strings, succeeded here in a sensitive and audible manner based on exquisite piano-pianissimo culture.
In between, the Lithuanian accordionist Martynas Levickis inspired with phenomenal sound magic (music by Philip Glass and Franck Angelis) on the “magic box of tricks”, as he himself calls the instrument. Then he played three tangos by Astor Piazzolla with the “Goldmunds”. Two encores for the ovations: a piece by Levickis and a Bavarian march, in which everyone, from the highly serious “Diotimas” to the innovative Levickis, took part with ease. Bravissimi for a long night of witty amusements!