Summerwinds Festival: Ars ad Mundum Ensemble; Apart
Giorgi Kalandarishvili, Oboe
Anna Kaczmarek-Kalandarishvili, Violin
Alex Gurfinkel, Clarinet
Hindenburg Leka, Viola
Shengzi Guo, Cello
Joy of playing and nobility in three distinct formations. The Ars ad Mundum Ensemble unfolds sound worlds that are rarely experienced, as here the oboe takes center stage – sometimes joined by a clarinet. Also exquisite is the program selection by the artists: "Apart" is an exciting play with sound colors and epochs, oscillating between classical clarity and grotesque, cheerful singing, drama, and irony.
With his oboe quartet, a sparkling mini-concert, Mozart invented the genre. The strings comment on the oboe, which expresses itself, agilely, arioso-like, expressively, reaching the highest notes and darkest shades – a virtuoso piece that does not chase effects but shines from within. Tension, as if restlessness lurked beneath the surface, runs through Britten's "Phantasy." The quartet by the 18-year-old feels improvisatory, atmospherically dense in its grace and sober melancholy. Gideon Klein was 24 when he composed his string trio in the Thereseinstadt concentration camp in 1944, just before his death in the coal mine Auschwitz-Fürstengrube: lyrical introspection and modernist sharpness, dignity and determination. And longing for the Moravian homeland, ironic lightness at the end? "The art in Theresienstadt showcased without unnecessary arabesques what was so sorely lacking for the people in this grotesquely deformed world of humiliation and violence, namely the human face that would have been worthy of a free person." High above the aesthetic pleasure stood a moral ideal that was an invaluable support in enduring daily humiliations." (Lubomír Peduzzi: Music in the Ghetto Theresienstadt. Brno 2005)
Twenty years earlier, Prokofiev wrote his g minor quintet in Paris, originally as ballet music for episodes from circus life. In the theatrically charged, fascinatingly provocative sounds, the circus has lost its innocence – just as societal normality did in the so-called Golden Twenties: a grotesque tête-à-tête ballet with Prokofiev's "machine rhythm," featuring elephants, jugglers, acrobats, and clowns who virtuously stumble, quarrel, and dance.
Apart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791): Quartet in F major for Oboe, Violin, Viola, Cello, KV 370
Benjamin Britten (1913–1976): Phantasy Quartet for Oboe, Violin, Viola, Cello, op. 2
Gideon Klein (1919–1945): String Trio (1944)
Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953): Quintet in g minor for Oboe, Clarinet, Violin, Viola, Double Bass (Cello), op. 39
Hallo, ich bin Maya.
