The composer had written his first string quartet in 1937, while still in Warsaw. After his escape to the Soviet Union in September 1939, he composed more of them, sometimes in ‘series’.
Two people – that’s all it takes to carry on an interesting and inspiring conversation. Two instruments constitute also the smallest possible ensemble – the dialogue.
“I believe that true poetry, worthy of lifelong dedication and utmost attention, of being impatiently awaited and painfully missed […] is impossible except when it encounters the world of that imagination which was once called spirit,”
Whether it referred to the parts with unusual kinds of figuration, like thorns irritating the ears of listeners from those time, or to the person of Pierre Buisson, the composer’s brother-in-law and at the same time his son’s best man when he married Marie Roze Dubois, it is hard to state unequivocally.
World Premiere recording of Józef Elsner’s Three String Quartets Op. 8 performed by Equilibrium String Quartet, on period instruments.
Carl Höckh’s work is exclusively instrumental. According to the current state of research, it includes several symphonies, violin sonatas, parthien, capricetti and violin concertos.
The most important new pieces for old instruments are created in cooperation with composers, therefore all four works on this album had their beginning in Aleksandrowicz meeting their authors.
The idea for recording this album emerged from the need to capture what we believe has been artistically unique in our two-year-long work together.
Wajnberg’s string quartets presented on this CD clearly belong to this emotional current in music – especially the Eleventh and the Thirteenth.
To be sure, my father was in many aspects in between: between Polish and French, between Jewishness and assimilation, between indelible past and ordinary life.