Leonkoro Quartet: Role Models

Like a red thread, role models run through the music history of the last centuries. Numerous composers sought inspiration and guidance in the works of their predecessors: The Dutch composer and pianist Henriëtte Bosmans – who was persecuted as a half-Jew during the German occupation of the Netherlands and is now hardly known – incorporates influences from her French contemporaries Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel in her string quartet composed in 1927. The second string quartet by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, his first "fully valid" quartet, which he created at the age of just 18, clearly shows his proximity to Beethoven. Finally, Franz Schubert was inspired to write his String Quartet No. 14 in D minor by his art song "Death and the Maiden," which he had composed just a few years earlier. The musicians of the Leonkoro Quartet explore these historical connections in music, and the ensemble is considered one of the most exciting emerging groups of our time. "The Leonkoro Quartet [...] has an enormous stage presence, is passionate about the music, takes full risks, and astonishes with its empathy for the particular sonority of the pieces [...]" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung).