| Samstag 27 März 2021 | 19:30 |
| Camerata Bern | |
| Patricia Kopatchinskaja | Violine |
Patricia Kopatchinskaja and her orchestra, Camerata Bern, present their Grammy-winning examination of Schubert’s greatest string quartet.
Franz Schubert had a strong vision of his own vulnerability and mortality. He was at a low ebb in March 1824 – sick, tired and unable to find peace. Every night, he went to bed hoping not to wake again.
When he felt able to write one day, Schubert reached for one of his own songs, in which death asks a young maiden innocently for her hand, offering eternal sleep. It became the tune on which Schubert would hang his string quartet and give voice to his innermost thoughts.
The resulting score is wracked with despair but filled with spirit. It opens with defiance, bursts with momentary hope and looks into an abyss of desperation. Ultimately, it finds hope and consolation.
In this specially curated performance, Patricia Kopatchinskaja presents her own orchestral arrangement of the quartet with her ensemble, Camerata Bern.
Their multifaceted exploration of Schubert’s work includes music by composers who came before and after him – from medieval dances of death to scintillating modernist fragments and a madrigal by a murderer, all pieces designed to show Death and the Maiden in a new light.
Kopatchinskaja’s rampant imagination and extraordinary communicative abilities have taken the classical music world by storm. Her CD recording of the Death and the Maiden project won a Grammy in 2018.
