European Chamber Music Academy – Scuola di Musica di Fiesole
Cecilia Ziano violino
Clara Franziska Schötensack violino
Francesca Piccioni viola
Giorgio Casati violoncello
Béla Bartók
Quartetto per archi n. 4 in do maggiore SZ 91
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Adagio e fuga in do minore per quartetto d’archi, K 546
Giuseppe Verdi
Quartetto in mi minore per archi
“A quartet by Verdi!”: disbelief and amazement show through this title by the Gazzetta Musicale, announcing the great opera composer’s new chamber music work (Milan, 1873). Arguing against the raging “fashion” that German instrumental music merited a superior rung in the musical hierarchy above Italian opera, Verdi reacted with a string quartet, which he had “written in [his] leisure moments” but in respect of academic rules and with a masterful use of the fugue. The quartet was performed in Milan only in 1876, at the very same Conservatory where the young, award-winning Lyskamm Quartet was born in 2008. It is now proposed in a bill that also includes Mozart’s contrapuntal masterpiece and the aggressive force of Bartók’s fourth quartet, in stark contrast with Romantic softness.
