Quartet Gerhard

Lluís Castán, violin | Maria Florea*, violin | Miquel Jordà, viola | Jesús Miralles, cello

PROGRAMME

Dmitri Shostakovich: String Quartet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 68 / String Quartet No. 15 in E-Flat Minor, Op. 144

From his first string quartet written in 1938 to his last (the fifteenth) composed in 1974, one year before his death, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote one of the most extensive and remarkable string quartet series of the twentieth century. A sincere testimony of a life that the composer was unable to capture in his symphonies, as he was forced to write them according to the political principles of the Soviet Union. In the quartets, Shostakovich conveys his ideas through a music full of contrasts in which we find joy and anguish, tenderness and violence, folk melodies and modernism. All his life is in these 15 quartets, which Quartet Gerhard began to perform in full in the summer of 2022 at the Torroella Festival with two concerts, followed last year with two more concerts, and ends this year with the last two concerts, one at 7 pm and the other at 9 pm, which will be held back-to-back on the same day.

* Maria Florea replaces Judit Bardolet, second violin of the Quartet Gerhard, who is off due to medical advice

A production by the Torroella Festival and the Donostia-San Sebastián Musical Fortnight.