Gstaad Menuhin Festival Gstaad Festival Orchestra Gstaad Academy Gstaad Digital Festival Festival-Zelt Gstaad

Search Login

Migration

18 July — 6 September 2025

Cycle «Change III» 2023 — 2025

Alexander Sitkovetsky

Saturday, 20 July 2024, Saanen Church

Chamber Music

Saturday, 20 July 2024
7.30 pm, Saanen Church

With her residency, Julia Fischer places all kinds of chamber music right into the spotlight – an exciting challenge and, at the same time, a wonderful opportunity to explore the stylistic richness of this unique form of musical expression. The String Quartet No. 1 by Smetana, titled “From My Life”, is also about storytelling—and there’s a good reason for it! Battling with deafness, Smetana, through his composition, creates a kind of confession where, in the composer’s own words, “the four instruments converse with each other like in a circle of friends”. For the second piece of the evening, Julia Fischer, showcasing her limitless talent, swaps her violin bow for the keys as she, alongside her friends, performs one of the most enchanting piano quintets of the entire repertoire: Dvořák’s Second. The work reflects the composer’s profound maturity, featuring characteristic moments of Central European folk music – the rhythmic patterns of the Ukrainian Dumka in the second movement, the Furiant (a Czech folk dance) in the third movement, and the joyfully emerging Polka in the finale.

 

This concert is offered by
MARIE-CHRISTINE DUTHEILLET DE LAMOTHE

Julia Fischer, Violin & Piano
Artist in Residence 2024
Alexander Sitkovetsky, Violin
Valerie Steenken, Violin (Dvořák)
Nils Mönkemeyer, Viola
Benjamin Nyffenegger, Cello

Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884) 
String Quartet No. 1 in E Minor, “From My Life”30'
Antonín Dvořák (1841-1904) 
Piano Quintet No. 2 in A Major, Op. 8140'
 70'
CHF 130/110/70/40