In our series »nachgehört« you can listen to concert highlights of the 2022 season (again). Look forward to new recordings every month until the start of the festival season in May 2023. With our Newsletter you will never miss a video again and get earlier exclusive access.

»À la carte«

Mandering Quartet

Although a concert lives from being together, it is seldom a question of active participation, especially not in the selection of works. But why not ask the audience what they would like to hear? According to the principle of »ordering à la carte,« the audience is left to decide democratically which string quartets are to be played in the concert. In doing so, the Mandelring Quartett offers a choice of nine exquisite works, works that were not only groundbreaking in the history of string quartets, but also represent key works in their long history of success. The choice in Ludwigsburg in June 2022 fell on the following works:

LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN String Quartet in C minor, op. 18/4

In the series of six string quartets that Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a year year after Joseph Haydn had completed his Opus 76, the only minor quartet the only minor quartet occupies a special place. Although he himself described it as a »right[n] mess! good for the hall audience,« it was the only quartet of the

series that he did not did not subsequently revise. Perhaps it was the deliberately that he did not like, but it was precisely the absence of the overly demanding has

earned the work rave reviews in its time.

DMITRI SHOSTAKOVICH String Quartet No. 7 in F-sharp minor, op. 108

With only three movements and a playing time of about twelve minutes, this is the shortest of the 15 string quartets written by Dmitri Shostakovich.

This does not make it any less haunting. The work in F-sharp minor strikes with elegiac individual motives lamenting, agitated and eerie tones, which are calmed down in the last movement.