Harmonic ambiguity, rhythmic intricacy, emancipation of the voices in and against each other, sudden breaks and sharp loud-quiet contrasts – there is nothing that Joseph Haydn, the inventor and perfector of the string quartet genre, has not already tried and tested in the huge series of his string quartets. The fabulous Goldmund Quartet (Florian Schötz, Pinchas Adt, violins; Christoph Vandory, viola; Raphael Paratore, violoncello) began in the almost full Prinzregententheater with the B minor Quartet op. 33, 1 and showed how bold with all the subtlety of the nuances Haydn is playing here with the general uncertainty of all expectations.
The “alla Serenata” from Erwin Schulhoff’s furious “Five Pieces” from 1923 had to suffer that the beneficial audience discipline from the early times of the pandemic is unfortunately decreasing and is now being coughed hard again into delicate pianissimi endings. The “Goldmunds” savored the cheeky distortions and poetically off-beat dance alienations of this suite in a rousingly expressive way, without forgetting the painful irony of this quite fragile music.
After the break, Franz Schubert’s quartet “Death and the Maiden”, which is huge in every respect. How the musicians threw themselves so deliberately and wholeheartedly into this piece, which demands everything in terms of expression, intensity, beauty of sound, security of intonation and instrumental sovereignty, did not shy away from the risk of breathlessness in the three fast movements and in the variations of the Andante con moto the great perspective on the whole Never lost the sentence, everyone was in high spirits. Huge applause, a Haydn Adagio from the “Seven Last Words of the Redeemer” and, after so much contemplation, the finest folk music.