AULA DES CÈDRES
AV. DE COURS 33
LAUSANNE
For our sixth festival, we, the musicians of the Sine Nomine Quartet, have decided to remain faithful to the guiding principle we set for ourselves right at the very start, namely to make sense of the assemblage of music that is particularly close to our hearts, whether it be well-loved works or those that are rarely performed. As far as the programme is concerned, we have always claimed a certain type of liberty: the liberty to choose between a strong and exclusive theme (such as the jeu d’esprit theme in 2009) or to adopt more flexible thematic constellations. It seems to us that our audiences approve of our way of juxtaposing works, which bears more resemblance to our sensibility as musicians than to any hard and fast conceptual vision.
The programme of the Festival Sine Nomine 2011 will be built around a very striking—albeit not entirely exclusive—thematic core: the Sine Nomine Quartet, with the participation of Raphael Oleg, will perform all of Mozart's viola quintets (string quartets with an extra viola). As a whole, these magnificent works, the crowning glory of Mozart's instrumental compositions, are worthy of the same interest that one would accord to the quartets of Beethoven or Bartok. They are true heavyweights and in terms of their breadth and power are unequalled in the period of the First Viennese School before Beethoven. They will be the leitmotif of our programme. The famous quintet in G minor, K 516, will be linked with the other manifesto of melancholy, John Dowland's Lacrimae pavanes, one of the finest examples of what one could call the great chamber music of Western music.
Similar to Luigi Boccherini—another eighteenth-century composer of chamber music, who wrote over 100 string quartets, some of which are masterpieces—Mozart in his quintets goes beyond the equilibrium of the science of composition, spontaneity, and emotional charge that he achieved in his string quartets. At the time, the string quartet was not yet considered the queen of chamber music formations, as it would late definitively become with Beethoven. In Mozart's day, everything was still open. For this reason, we have decided to dedicate the entire Saturday (28 May) to the fascinating era that was the eighteenth century.
Dowland's Lacrimae pavanes and Benjamin Britten's beautiful variations on the same theme lead us to other key works of English music such as Elgar's quintet or Bridge's trio—music of an astonishing modernity that urgently needs to be discovered.
It is our tradition to close the festival with a major piece, and this time we have chosen George Enescu's massive octet op. 7.
As a late nod to the Schumann year, we will dedicate an entire concert to this composer, who is particularly dear to us. For several reasons, including our wish to pay homage to this composer, we are inviting the Schumann Quartet with piano to be the main host of this event. This will be the first time that this quartet—one could say, our alter ego in French-speaking Switzerland—takes part in our festival.
The list of musicians we have invited to perform at Festival Sine Nomine 2011 is rounded off by both artists who are well known to our audiences—such as the wonderful soprano, Brigitte Fournier—and some new faces, including two excellent ensembles from German-speaking Switzerland: the Swiss Piano Trio and the Casal Quartett, playing period instruments.
NEWQuatuor Sine Nomine Lausanne
Patrick Genet, François Gottraux, Hans Egidi, Marc Jaermann
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