On Sunday 7 August, in the Parish Church of Caslano, the Quartetto Altemps will perform for Ceresio Estate, a recently formed group made up of highly experienced musicians – Stefano Barneschi and Fabio Ravasi, violins; Ernest Braucher, viola; Marco Testori, cello – gained within internationally renowned ensembles, such as Il Giardino Armonico, Europa Galante, Kammerorchester Basel, I Barocchisti, Il Suonar Parlante. The cellist Marco Testori introduces us to the concert.
George Onslow is a French composer with English origins: another world than the Austrian Franz Schubert. What are the points of contact and detachment between the two?
Onslow was primarily a prolific chamber music composer who had a strong following in Germany and England; esteemed by critics of his time so much that he was called ‘The French Beethoven’, his reputation quickly declined after his death. His wealth, social position and personal tastes allowed him to pursue a path unknown to most of his French contemporaries, more similar to that of the German and Austrian Romantic composers of the time. It is precisely his interest in classical forms, counterpoint and emotional expressiveness in his music that places him close to Reicha, Hummel, the more classical Beethoven and therefore to Schubert. These affinities are found in the sounds and atmospheres of Schubert’s Rosamunda quartet, in particular if the slow movements are compared between this work and the Onslow quartet: in both cases spirituality and serenity are interrupted by moments of romantic emotional pathos.
In the context of a generalized and growing interest in music performed in a philological way, what is the aspect that most distinguishes your quartet?
Our executive code wants to be that of a reading of the romantic repertoire with the approach of those who come from the past and not, as often happens, making a backward path coming from the ‘modern’ way of playing. This, in our opinion, helps us to free this music from the executive ‘encrustations’ linked to the twentieth century tradition. With this in mind, we try, for example, to use vibrato as an embellishment and not in a systematic way, to respect the ligatures conceived by the composer, to use agogics as a means to enhance musical affects.
All of you, members of the Altemps Quartet, have a flourishing activity in groups and ensembles of international level. What prompted you to set up your own stable formation?
The string quartet has always been our secret dream. The common passion for chamber music led us to often play together in various ensembles dedicated to respect for performance practice until we said to ourselves: why not try? Why not try to have our say on a repertoire that contains some of the most beautiful pages in the entire history of music?
Your program includes ‘Rosamunde’, one of Schubert’s and musical history’s masterpieces. Is there a relationship between your performance and what ‘lies behind’ the composition?
The quartet in A minor owes its name ‘Rosamunde’ to the theme of the second movement, which takes up the one already used for the stage music composed by Schubert for the homonymous play by Helmina von Chezy. In reality, Schubert starts from the melody, developing a path that no longer has any reference with scene music. Same fate for the first movement, whose incipit proposed by the second violin recalls the melancholy theme of one of Schubert’s first lieder ‘Gretchen am Spinnrade’ or the minuet, inspired by the melody of ‘Die Götter Griechenlands’. The use of lieder themes to create new compositions was a usual practice in Schubert and our approach in these cases is to tune into the original thematic material and then contextualize it in the music for quartet.