NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchester: Alan Gilbert & Elphier-Quartett

In the organizer's words:

Chamber music with chief conductor Alan Gilbert & Elphier Quartet

Alan Gilbert on the viola: together with the Elphier Quartet, the chief conductor of the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra will perform works by Britten, Bruch and Schulhoff in the Elphi's Small Hall on May 10.

Sat, 10.05.2025 | 19.30 hrs

Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Small Hall

Elphier Quartet:

Lyudmila Minnibaeva violin

Yihua Jin-Mengel violin

Alla Rutter Viola

Phillip Wentrup Violoncello

Andreas Grünkorn violoncello

Alan Gilbert Viola

FRANZ SCHUBERT
Quartet movement in C minor D 703
MAX BRUCH
String Quintet in A minor
BENJAMIN BRITTEN
Phantasy in F minor for string quintet
ERWIN SCHULHOFF
String Sextet

Hidden treasures

After some classics that Gilbert and his musicians have dedicated themselves to in previous special chamber music concerts, this evening's program features treasures of the repertoire that have received far too little attention: the short "Phantasy" for string quintet - a student work by the 18-year-old Benjamin Britten - immediately captivates with its dramatic impetus and constantly changing characters. It is no coincidence that the later successful English composer won the Cobbett Prize for chamber music with it.

Beautifully nostalgic: Max Bruch

After the work of an up-and-coming teenager comes that of a retrospective old master: in the last years of his life, 80-year-old Max Bruch wrote two string quintets which, despite being composed after the First World War, sound as if they were composed in the heyday of Romanticism alongside Brahms or Schumann. Hopeless nostalgia or a later stroke of luck for the Romantic quintet repertoire? In any case, simply music to enjoy!

Impressive testimony to the times: Schulhoff's Sextet

Written almost at the same time, but as if from another world: Erwin Schulhoff's string sextet is as stormy, expressive and stirring as the 1920s. The leading representative of Czech modernism at the time was at the height of his career in the year the work was completed (1924) - before he was later declared a "degenerate composer" by the Nazis and imprisoned in a camp. It almost seems as if the literally "dying" end of the piece foreshadows these tragic developments ...

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