Conflict and jealousy characterized the complicated love affair between literary greats Ingeborg Bachmann and Max Frisch. The public gained a deeper insight two years ago when the spectacular correspondence between the two was published. For the Rothko String Quartet, this provided the impetus for a new concert project in which love takes center stage without any kitsch or pathos. The quartet finds musical answers to seven poignant letters by Bachmann - not least with Leoš Janáček's string quartet "Intimate Letters". The four musicians have long been known in Ludwigsburg for their original programs and with "Love Reacts Only" they are celebrating both the program premiere and their third visit to us.
[text: Ludwigsburger Schlossfestspiele]
"Misfortune always strikes at the point where it can count on the deepest pain," wrote Ingeborg Bachmann, and it is precisely this pain that the strings drive into the music. It stings, it is fierce, it hurts, it is full of tenderness, especially on this fulfilling evening, and it is full of life because it contains everything: sadness, hope, joy, suffering, upheaval and demolition.
[review: Susanne Benda, Stuttgarter Zeitung, June 16, 2024]
The only certainty in life is death. A phrase that everyone knows. Nevertheless, society pushes death to the margins. There are homes for people coming to the end of their lives, hospices for the dying and hospitals for the terminally ill. That the death of a person is the end for those who remain is not an absolute truth. Time and again we hear that the cost of a funeral poses an economic threat to the descendants. One has to plan with 7,000 - 10,000 €. Errollyn Wallen addresses this issue in "Are you worried about the rising cost of funerals?". It clashes with the Mozart Requiem on this concert evening. Commissioning a mass for the dead and having it performed is one of the most pompous and expensive ways to commemorate the deceased.
The two works embody completely different compositional approaches as well as highly contrasting sound worlds: While the Requiem creates an irresistible downward pull, Errollyn Wallen's work immediately lightens the sombre mood with the first movement, a soulful blues. On this concert evening, Isabel Pfefferkorn and the Rothko String Quartet draw attention to what remains for the bereaved between grief and bills: the search for consolation and the hope of freedom through a new beginning.
[text: PODIUM Esslingen]
A contemporary work also became the highlight of the evening with its stylistic expansion of boundaries: "Are You Worried About the Rising Costs of Funerals?" is the title of a neo-Dada-style collage by the British composer Errollyn Wallen, born in Belize in 1958, which - starting with the blues and moving on to ragtime, balladry and [...] chanting - combines a veritable grab bag of genres to create a classically perfect virtuoso piece for a female voice and a string quartet with a wide range of differentiations.
[review: Martin Bernklau, Cul-Tu-Re.de Kultublog, August 3, 2024]
The Rothko String Quartet is creating a new oratorio for Bach's 339th birthday. Held together by its own chorales, it is dominated by tributes from other female composers to the birthday boy. From Maria Herz's arrangement of the famous Chaconne from 1927 and Florence Price's Folk Songs in Counterpoint to "Reflections on the Theme B-A-C-H" by Sofia Gubaidulina and Caroline Shaw's "The Evergreen", a universe of different music-historical strands opens up, all of which start with Bach. The most diverse musical styles interweave through time to reveal new perspectives in each other and thus reveal a living legacy of the composer that goes far beyond his own work.
[text: Thüringer Bachwochen]
[...] Carolin Shaw's [...] string quartet "The Evergreen" allows the members of the Rothko String Quartet [...] to display their full variety of sounds, from echoes of Arvo Paert's "Fratres" including meditative tinntinabuli to roaring chords and pizzicati sounding like falling drops of water.
[review: Dietholf Zerweck, Ludwigsburger Kreiszeitung, August 6, 2024]
"I feel air from other planets." Spherical, dreamy, not quite of this world. A view with live streams from and into the universe with Arnold Schoenberg's settings of poems by Stefan George and music by Fanny Hensel, Fjóla Evans, Julie Zhu and Caroline Shaw.
[text: PODIUM Esslingen]
"The Giving Tree" by Shel Silverstein has been considered the most controversial of all children's books for more than half a century - if it can be considered controversial at all. The lifelong love story between a tree and a boy, in which one side always gives everything and the other always takes what is offered, is both sad and touching: at the end, an old man sits on a tree stump - "and the tree was happy". Does the picture book tell of the unconditional love of parents towards their children, does it tell of the mercilessness of people towards nature?
The Rothko String Quartet takes the story literally - and puts nature on trial in the Kaisersaal of Esslingen's Court House. Love or exploitation, the plants are on trial. And mankind? Plaintiff and defendant in one, the Rothko String Quartet presents music from the Renaissance to the present day. From Maddalena Casulana's "O Notte" to Gabriella Smith's "Carrot Revolution", the evening will feature pieces about repentant gardeners and the raging of nature.
[text: PODIUM Esslingen]