Quatuor Modigliani

Paris-based string quartet Quatuor Modigliani is acclaimed worldwide; in the past season, the ensemble has toured the US, South America, Japan and Europe with exuberantly successful concerts in Wigmore Hall in London, Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin and the festival in Salzburg.

Now the quartet will perform at Grünewald Hall with a colourful programme that spans multiple centuries and countries. Terra memoria, Saariaho’s second piece for string quartet, was composed in 2006. Saariaho has always been captivated by the acoustically generous and sensitive expressions of string instruments, and has dedicated this piece to all those who have left us. The title refers to the earth and to memory.

Grieg surely shared Saariaho’s fascination with string instruments. He described his String Quartet in G Minor as striving for acoustic breadth through the resonance of the instrument. The piece is also acoustically full-bodied – almost as if Grieg wanted the quartet to sound like an orchestra.

The programme will also offer a divertimento for string quartet by a very young Mozart, a piece he composed in Salzburg in 1772, where he returned after several successful tours of Italy.