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.”