Schwetzingen SWR Festival: Praise of Resistance

The Armida Quartet dedicates this concert to one of the most powerful figures of Greek mythology: Prometheus. Prometheus is a bringer of light, a free spirit, an enlightener, an artist, and a revolutionary. He is one of the most colorful figures in Greek mythology, and his story has inspired countless poets, visual artists, and composers to this day. This concert is a tribute to him. The program spans from Mozart's Freemasonry through Beethoven's resistances to the Hungarian-French composer György Kurtág, who examines the smallest cells of sound under a microscope. Kurtág's Micro-Studies from 1977/78 are musical aphorisms that combine rhythms of Hungarian folk dances with ideas of serialism. This fits well with the radical chromaticism of the main theme in the opening movement of Mozart's E-flat major Quartet KV 428. Even more so, Beethoven's late string quartets were considered "new music" at the time. Among them is Opus 132, which includes a rather quiet movement. The choral-laden "Holy Song of Thanksgiving" of a healed person could also have been sung by Prometheus: After Zeus had punished him by chaining him to a rock for a long time, where an eagle consumed his constantly regenerating liver, the father of the gods released the healed one into freedom.