One can regret the move of the series from the weiben hall to the rossini hall for acoustic and atmospheric reasons, because the former is ideal for string chamber music. But it naturally excuses the observation that it would have been simply too small for the concert with the minetti quartet from austria.
They were the first to step into the ring this time: maria ehmer (1. Violin), anna knopp (2. Violin), milan milojicic (viola) and leonhard ro czek (violoncello) joined forces in 2003 and were already very quickly and very successfully on the road internationally. Today they have arrived, are established, in demand, although they were unusually reticent, for example, in the production of sound carriers.
And yet it is exciting to observe that there is still movement, still development in this ensemble. This is already evident in the small dividing line that runs between the men and the women of the quartet: milan milojicic and leonhard ro czek are the two extroverts – the former in his playing gestures, which always address the audience a bit, the latter in his pointed approach and in his slightly distanced, ironic phrase endings, which in mozart's "hunting quartet" KV 458 are also not the worst interpretation approach.
Highly democratic result
They stood out above all because maria ehmer and anna knopp were very strongly oriented towards the music and its overall sound, because they placed themselves completely in the service of the music, so to speak, and stepped back as individuals. The result was highly democratic because maria ehmer did not push herself to the forefront as a primaria. But all in all, the music was perfectly played, but also a little bit too much taken back, a little bit too smooth, a little bit too conventional. Particularly in the last movement, the 1. The violin could have provided a few stimulating impulses. Although it takes a lot to keep the tension in a slow movement, in which nothing really happens, as the minettis managed to do.
The overall impression was quite different with mendelssohn's string quartet in f minor op. 80. The quartet's intensive study of the work to the point of CD maturity was noticeable. There was really passionate music making, this was pure purified romance in the sense of an emotional confrontation. It became clear that in this work mendelssohn was dealing with the death of his sister fanny, to whom he owed more than all the zelters put together. This anger against fate, but also this resignation, into which he repeatedly descended, was highly dramatic and extraordinarily differentiated. The four musicians played against each other and still came together. It was no longer a question of a round overall sound or a gentle tone, but of emotional effect. The contrast with the encore, the slow movement from mendelssohn's 1. String quartet, couldn't have been more coarse: the then 20 year old's distraught naive amorousness sounded out of every chord.
A movement as a high point
The center (and for some the high point) of the concert was a single quartet movement: wolfgang rihm's "grave", dedicated to thomas kakuska, violist of the alban berg quartet, who died in 2005. A moving piece of music that begins with distant funeral bell chords. Then the viola is silent, becomes perceptible by its absence, until it quietly creeps in again and at first remains in the background, more color than sound. Rihm has not succumbed here to the danger of putting the viola on a monumental pedestal, but he only makes it, in the form of a highlight, the voice leader in a discussion that occasionally veers into the tonal, in which the music is often only noise. The minettis played this small, very personal requiem with almost devout concentration and precision, forcing the audience to listen and taking them into a difficult world.