Florian Schötz, violin

Pinchas Adt, violin

Christoph Vandory, viola

Raphael Paratore, cello

The Goldmund Quartet is known for its "extraordinary playing" and "multi-layered homogeneity" (Süddeutsche Zeitung) in its interpretations of the quartet's great classical and modern works of literature. The depth and incredibly fine intonation and the phrases worked out to the smallest detail inspire audiences all over the world.

The quartet is counted among the leading string quartets of the younger generation in the world, which is also reflected in their 2023/24 season calendar. Highlights include performances by the Quartet at prestigious festivals such as Festival Dolomites, Settimane Musicali di Ascona and Viotti Festival in Vercelli, Italy. The ensemble will return to important venues such as the Concertgebouw Amsterdam for a recital with pianist Fazil Say, Tokyo Opera City as part of a tour of Japan, as well as North America for a tour that will take them to Washington DC, New York, Philadelphia and Vancouver between others. Further performances lead the Quartet to the famous series of concerts Hörtnagel in Munich, Haus der Musik in Innsbruck and the Schwetzingen Festival.

Winners of the renowned Wigmore Hall International String Competition 2018 and Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition 2018, they have been selected as Rising Stars of the 2019/20 season by the Organization of European Concert Halls. Since 2019, they have been playing instruments of the Paganini Quartet by Antonio Stradivari, provided by the Nippon Music Foundation. In addition, the quartet was awarded the Jürgen Ponto Foundation Music Prize in March 2020 and the Freiherr von Waltershausen Prize in December 2020. In 2016, the quartet received the Bavarian Art Promotion Award and the Karl Klinger Award of the ARD competition.

After their third album, Travel Diaries, with works by Wolfgang Rihm, Ana Sokolović, Fazil Say and Dobrinka Tabakova, which will be published by Berlin Classics in 2020, two new important recordings will follow in 2023. Prisma, released in the Neue Meister Berlin Classica series as a limited edition vinyl, features contemporary works by Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass and Uno Helmersson alongside two new works commissioned by Pascal Schumacher and Sophie Jani. Der Tod und das Mädchen & Songs is an album of Schubert's works - in the words of the Quartet itself: "The eternal wanderer fascinated us and followed us from the beginning of our quartet life, his chamber music was among the first works we performed".

Artists with whom he plays chamber music are Jörg Widmann, Ksenija Sidorova, Alexander Krichel, Alexey Stadler and Wies de Boevé, Nino Gvetadze, Noa Wildschut, Elisabeth Brauss, Maximilian Hornung, Frank Dupree, Simon Höfele and a number of others.

In addition to studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Munich, as well as training with members of the Alban Berg Quartet, including Günter Pichler at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofia and the Artemis Quartet in Berlin, members of the Goldmund Quartet also trained with members of the Hagen, Borodin, Belcea Quartet , Ysaye and Cherubini, as well as Ferenc Rados, Eberhard Feltz and Alfredo Brendel, who gave the quartet important musical impulses.

About the works:

One of the lesser-known composers of the so-called of the new renaissance of English music, i.e. the national trend led by Vaughan Williams, Gustav Holst and William Walton in the first half of the 20th century, was Gerald Finzi (1901-1956). He lived in the countryside and was not present on the live music scene of London, but self-effacingly created his small oeuvre. His music exudes a typically elegiac note of English pastoralism, and this can also be heard in Romance in E flat major, a work written in 1928, although he published it, somewhat revised, only in 1951. The youthful work bears traces of early traumas, the loss of his father and three brothers in The First World War, and a melancholic undertone will color even the cheerful pieces of music, which are not destined to last long. The passionate piece is filled with strong melodic invention, which rests on contrasts, from a calm introduction, a chord that slowly dissolves towards a strong dynamic intensity, developed lines, breaking in a short fragment with a pizzicato, returning to the calm of melancholy towards the end of the piece. Originally composed for string orchestra, it is often included in the quartet's repertoire.

Instead of a love letter, a piece of music that describes a twenty-year long love story - it's the String Quartet no. 2 in D major by Alexander Borodin (1833-1887), a piece he dedicated to his wife Ekaterina, writing it in one breath during August 1881. It is a piece for which Borodin did not write the usual program, but in it, according to Borodin's biographer, Sergej Dianin, is about the evocation of the moment when Borodin and his wife Ekaterina met twenty years earlier in Heidelberg. The dialogue between him and his wife is woven into the music - the violin with a cheerful, lyrical, singing line represents Ekaterina, and the cello, in a harmonious dialogue with the violin, which the composer himself played, represented himself. However, this does not mean that there are not occasional "marital" disagreements, i.e. detours into shadier tonality areas outside of D major, but they are very short-lived in the first movement. The second brings ethereal lightness, grace and beauty, in a slightly breathless dance movement, which undoubtedly describes the rapture of lovers. The most famous is the third movement, Nocturne, which begins with a warm cello melody, accompanied by viola and second violin. The passionate cantilena will find its identical reflection in the high pitched melody of the violin, which is accompanied by a thick string chord. The central part, the canon, is there to give a new impulse to the dialogue of the instruments and a new performance of the love melody. After the opening Andante, the Finale brings a joyous, energetic climax to the composition, with an elaborate coda that is like a shiny decoration on a beautiful gift that Borodin dedicates to his life partner.

A strong bond, which overcame all obstacles, bound Robert Schumann (1810-1856) and Clara Wieck, who became his wife after a long relationship. In February 1842, the thirty-one-year-old Schumann accompanied his new wife on a concert tour of Germany, only to soon return to Leipzig on his own as music critic for the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik. His composing career was not yet in full swing and for a long time he shied away from writing anything but piano music. In Leipzig that March 1842, "thoughts about a quartet" came to him, and the result was the simultaneous writing of three quartets from his opus 41. He knew the quartets of Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, to whom he dedicated the entire opus. He thought of the quartet as "a beautiful and sometimes incomprehensible interwoven conversation between four people". The "conversation" in these quartets, despite loneliness and sometimes poor health, is usually gentle and cheerful, showing at the same time the real Schumann, romantic and impulsive. The Third Quartet in A major became a favorite. It begins with a gentle descending motif, often described as Clara's motif. The entire first movement rests on this motif, which is involved not only in the introduction, but also in the two melodies of the main themes. The second, which begins with the cello, sounds ethereal and unearthly, due to the accompaniment set at irregular times, which creates a special effect. In the second movement, a series of variations, the idea of ​​playing with rhythms, which was Schumann's favorite, continues. A punctuated theme full of irregular breaths varies in a series of variations, the first three are somewhat restless and dark, the fourth a lyrical canon, and the fifth brings unrest, but the coda restores a calm mood. The third movement is a beautiful example of lyricism and romance, the first theme being song-like and the second theme being anxious and menacing. However, the insistent rhythm of the march calms down and the gentle nature of the composer prevails once more. The Dance Finale is composed like a rondo, in which four sections alternate. The first one will set the stamp on the whole movement: from the very beginning, with a strong accent on the pre-bar with which the theme begins, it brings a feeling of intoxication and abandonment to the rustic dance rhythm.

Zrinka Matić

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