Haydn / Ravel / FranckHaydn / Ravel / Franck

The founder of the string quartet genre, or rather his father, Joseph Haydn, as part of his services to Count Esterházy, visited our capital Bratislava several times during the 18th century. The string quartets from opus 76 are the top representatives of Haydn’s chamber work, while the Minuet of the second quartet is quite unconventionally built on a double canon, for which it was later called the Witches’ Minuet. The next two quartets will transport us to a French province at the end of the 19th century. At the premiere of the quartet by the then twenty-eight-year-old student of the Paris Conservatoire Maurice Ravel, the teacher Gabriel Fauré, to whom the quartet was dedicated, was also present. The tailor-made piano quintet of Camile Saint-Saëns, which premiered the piano part of César Franc’s work, was described by the philosopher and critic Robert Scruton as unashamedly narcissistic.

Varga Quartet Wien has been creating interesting concert programs since 2007, which provide the audience with the opportunity to penetrate deeper into the charm of chamber music. In cooperation with the quartet, Slovak pianist Filip Štrauch, who has been working at the Danish Music Academy in Copenhagen for five years, will also perform.