Schwetzingen SWR Festival: Quintets, Zeal, Supreme Delight

With works by Haydn, Berg, and Beethoven, the audience experiences a program of emotional extremes. "Four blonde, cheerful, very enthusiastic, and eager musicians... When I saw how they almost knew my quartet by heart, how they instinctively felt it was truly valid music and performed it, my heart was filled with joy!" This is how Alban Berg praised the young Havemann Quartet, which successfully premiered his string quartet op. 3, composed during his studies with Arnold Schönberg, in 1923. One might assume that the composer would have equally praised the Viatores Quartet, which has been supported as an SWR Culture New Talent since 2024. Alongside Berg's highly expressive work, Haydn's op. 76 No. 3, with its variation movement on "God Save Franz the Emperor," stands next to Beethoven's string quartet in C-sharp minor op. 131. There has been heated debate over whether all seven parts of this work are fully-fledged movements, as well as the practical question of when the performers can retune their instruments amidst this breathless chain of formal experiments and emotional extremes. For Richard Wagner, the first movement was "perhaps the most melancholic thing ever expressed in tones," while the last was "the highest bliss, anguish, frenzy, lust, and suffering." Who could be a better fit than a quartet that carries the journey between worlds in its name?