Opening Concert Third Edition
with Cuarteto Quiroga, Ilker Arcayürek
20:15 / Sat 29 Jan / Muziekgebouw Main Hall / € 39
Evening Concert Première String Quartet + Voice
Cuarteto Quiroga
Aitor Hevia (viool)
Cibrán Sierra (viool)
Josep Puchades (altviool)
Helena Poggio (cello)
Ilker Arcayürek
Tenor
Dove
Togetherness (wereldpremière)
Dove
In Damascus
Brahms
String Quartet no. 1, op. 51/1
For us, as a biennale, being together and being separated is a recurring topic: we are together for eight days, then separated for almost two years. But when the 2020 and 2022 editions turned out to enclose a global pandemic, that concept of togetherness and alone-ness changed — perhaps forever. Although we could not have foreseen it during our first meeting, the new work by Jonathan Dove turned out to be the perfect opening of the third edition: he chose Togetherness as the title for his new string quartet.
Cuarteto Quiroga, joined by tenor Ilker Arcayürek, plays another recent piece by Dove: In Damascus. Another composition in which Dove makes the zeitgeist tangible — a powerful setting of texts by Syrian poet Ali Safar for tenor and string quartet; “a cold and powerful vision of indescribable beauty, torn by a haphazard war.”
It is precisely those themes of freedom and loneliness that are also reflected in Brahms’ music: “For me, f.a.e. – frei aber einsam – remained a symbol, and it is my gift, in spite of everything, to evoke it.”
Although we could not have foreseen it during our first meeting, the new work by Jonathan Dove turned out to be the perfect opening of the third edition: he chose Togetherness as the title for his new string quartet.