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SCHUBERT / BERG
SCHUBERT String Quartet No. 13 'Rosamunde' D804, Gretchen am
Spinnrade D118, Die Götter Griechenlands D677, BERG Suite Lyrique,
Schliesse mir die Augen beide (1900+1925 versions),
Quatuor Thymos; Salomé Haller (soprano); Christoph
Eschenbach (piano)
'Thymos': a word that was used by the ancient Greek philosophers
to refer to feeling and emotion… And it was
the spirit of thymos that brought together the musicians of
the eponymous quartet, first-prize winners from the Paris
and Lyon Conservatoires and members of the Orchestre
de Paris.
The Thymos Quartet, like Calliope, is keenly interested in music of the Viennese school. This recording
presents two masterpieces, representing two different periods in the rich history of Viennese music: Franz
Schubert's String Quartet No. 13 'Rosamunde', completed in March 1824, and Alban Berg's Lyric Suite, a “suite
for string quartet” (Berg's own words), written between September 1925 and October 1926. The latter is
Berg's first extended 12-note composition, using the technique that Schoenberg had developed in 1923.
In January 1977 the American musicologist George Perle discovered a copy of the score of the Lyric Suite
annotated by Berg, in which the composer revealed its secret programme: without that key to the code, the
complexities of this work would be indecipherable. The Lyric Suite is the story of a passion, recounting the
episodes in the personal drama of an impossible love: that between Berg and Hanna Fuchs-Robettin.
The musicians of the Thymos Quartet feel in tune with the aesthetic of this work, which calls for a very subtle
balance between individual performance and harmony between all the players. It is a very difficult work
to perform and one that is deeply moving for the performers.
Schubert's String Quartet No. 13, also a moving work, refers to the inevitability of death; we discover in this
composition an almost symphonic expression of violence, and it is also a tragic yet intimate confession. In
this quartet Schubert quotes his lieder Gretchen am Spinnrade D118 (text by Goethe) and Schöne Welt, wo bist
du? D677 (text by Schiller); Berg's Schliesse mir die Augen beide, to a poem by Theodor Storm, is connected
with his Lyric Suite. These songs are therefore presented on this recording in order to give a fuller picture.
These songs, as well as the sixth movement of the Lyric Suite, are performed the young soprano Salomé
Haller, who was as enchanted by this programme as the musicians of the Thymos Quartet are.
The musicians of the Thymos Quartet have played this programme many times. They came to the notice of
the conductor Christoph Eschenbach when they presented it at the Théâtre Mogador in Paris, as a result of
which he subsequently invited them to the Ravinia Festival (Chicago, USA) where, in August 2005, they performed
Alban Berg's Lyric Suite with the Debussy String Quartet and (with Eschenbach at the piano) Dvorak's
Piano Quintet (to be recorded on the Calliope label in November 2010).
In 2006 Christoph Eschenbach invited the Thymos Quartet
to take part in the Orchestre de Paris's Boulez cycle at the
Salle Pleyel in Paris, where they performed Webern's Five
Movements, Opus 5, and Berg's Lyric Suite. From that time
dates their desire to take their work one step further by
recording the latter.
harmonia mundi UK- released 11th January 2010