Program

Joseph Haydn
Streichquartett B-Dur op. 76 Nr. 4 Hob III:78 („Sonnenaufgang“)

Dmitri Schostakowitsch
Zwei Stücke für Streichquartett (Elegie und Polka)

intermission

Alexander Borodin
Streichquartett Nr. 2 D-Dur


For all those who don't want to get up before 4:48 a.m. on this Sunday in July to experience the sunrise, our four Konzerthausorchester string players have moved it to a friendly 11:00 a.m. They begin their matinee with a Haydn quartet from 1797: Although it was not the composer himself who gave it the beautiful epithet „sunrise“, the impressively soaring melody of the first violin fully deserves it. In 1931, seven years before his first „official“ string quartet, Dmitri Shostakovich used his own body of work for two short string quartet pieces: the wistfully elegiac Adagio is based on an aria by the heroine of his forthcoming opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (1932), the Polka comes from the ballet The Golden Age (1929/30), which the football-mad composer actually dedicated to his favourite sport.

Alexander Borodin, whose second string quartet from 1881, filled with Russian melodicism, is heard at the end of the concert, was an extraordinarily gifted, multi-talented person. Recognised not only as a composer but also as an innovative scientist and professor of organic chemistry in St Petersburg, he unfortunately often felt squeezed between many duties and inclinations. Incidentally, his own instrument was the cello, which he is said to have played very well and which he makes sing wonderfully in this piece.