Matinee

Schumann and Mendelssohn met for the first time in 1835; Robert as a critic and budding composer, Felix as the chief conductor of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra and a composer with several successes to his name. The two twenty-year-olds developed a deep friendship, in which they not only promoted and performed each other’s works, but also played chamber music together, played chess and billiards.

An additional viola in a string quartet offers a huge advantage: you can program a viola duo. George Benjamin wrote Viola, Viola for Yuri Bashmet and Nobuko Imai, and wanted to emphasize the melancholic, intimate character of the viola in this composition. But along the way, he discovered more and more possibilities to elicit symphonic sounds from the eight strings. Viola, Viola could prove to be the most voluminous work of this concert.